


Whimper

by Creme13rulee



Series: Fever/Whimper Duology [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Angst and Feels, Blood, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, I promise, M/M, Medical Procedures, Romance, Testing - Freeform, Werewolves, good ending, i think, love and sadness, medical research, prepare to cry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 15:28:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 47
Words: 30,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18391181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Creme13rulee/pseuds/Creme13rulee
Summary: Part 2 of Fever. Inspired by The Wolves of Mercy Falls Trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater and part of the Viktuuri Fluff bangViktor and Yuuri have their forever. Viktor slowly acknowledges his past life and what his future holds. Winter nears, and Viktor's wolf skin does not return-- but his  decisions come back to haunt him.Yuuri  isn't the cure.  His skin smells sweetly of wolf, and their forever slowly slips through his fingers. Viktor only wants his happiness with Yuuri, something that is harder than they ever expected.





	1. Yuuri- Growl

Yuuri  
55F 12 C  
I still feel like I was run over a car, but I can’t stand it anymore. I’m itching to get out, something stretching and pushing under my skin, my bones aching for the open sky instead of a low ceiling.

Viktor follows me to the rink. It’s the first time he’s followed me-- before, we were too scared it would change him. Scared that someone would recognize him. However, hair tucked into one of my beanies he keeps his human skin, and he hovers over me when I fumble with the combination lock on my locker. He sits next to me on the bench when I lace my skates. He doesn’t say a word, but he doesn’t look away either.

I get to do one lap around the rink before Viktor reappears, stepping onto the ice in a rented pair. The ice is empty, only because it is actually the time we use for practice, but Emily overtrained, and with me sick, Celestino forced us all to take a break.

I keep my hands folded behind my back as I skate compulsory figures. It hides the shaking, and it's easier to squeeze my hands when they’re clasped behind me.  
Viktor keeps his distance at first, mirroring my movements on the other half of the rink. He’s sorely out of practice-- years of it, but it comes back to him as naturally as breathing. He manages to work up from a single jump to a double toe loop before we both realize that I’m just staring.

There’s the only soft “shhhh” of blades in the ice and the muffled pop radio drifting in from the lobby, a background to my hammering heart. 

“Show me the skating you like best?” He holds out his hands, and I automatically reach out and rest my fingers on top of his.  
This is awkward, but it’s been my plan for the past three years. I would have never been brave enough to skate Viktor’s last complete choreography on the same ice as him, or in competition where it would be compared to the real thing.

Until last winter, it had been a tribute, to a long lost hero. It is the skating I like the best. Viktor just doesn’t know that I didn’t fall in love with him this summer.

I’ve loved him for years.

I skate backward, though I close my eyes so I don’t have to meet his gaze anyway. Celestino used to select all my programs, but this season I chose my own. It’s all muscle memory-- I’ve been skating it for years, and I’ve been doing it in practice for the past five months. I don’t need the music, I can hear it in my head as I sweep myself into the starting position.

Viktor doesn’t need the music either. I can hear him gasp when I get ready to move into the first jump. It’s the last thing I hear though, until I twist into the final position, my lungs screaming for air and sweat dripping down my face.

I nearly fall flat on my face when Viktor collides into me, his arms squeezing any breath I manage to suck in.

“Stammi Vicino… Yuuri...I…” Viktor just squeezes me tighter, and my face burns hot. 

“Sorry-- I---” He cuts me off my pressing his mouth against mine. It’s clumsy and awkward and he knocks his teeth into mine, but I don’t mind the bruise I can feel start to bloom under my skin.

“Never apologize for something like that,” he breathes. His thumbs work at my cheeks, wiping away the tears I don’t realize that are falling.

“I popped the--”  
“Shhh,” He interrupts me, kissing me right in the middle of my forehead. “Stop talking. I’m trying very hard not to ravish you right here on the ice.”

I laugh, still trying to catch my breath. “What?” I pant, “Radish?”

His hands wander to the front of my sweatpants, and I immediately jerk away with a humiliating squeak.

“O-oh.” I lick my lips, and I can taste sweat and Viktor on them.

“Yuuri, I’m sorry, do you not--” Viktor tucks his hands behind his back, and my stomach twists.

“No---Yes!--- N-no?” I stutter. My head is swimming, and I feel like I should die right there. I look around-- the rink is still empty, thank god.

“I--I don’t know what to do. How. Um. You’re… my first. First...everything.” I can't even tell if I’m blushing anymore--- everything is too warm, warm enough that my body has started tuning it out. It’s a constant fever for me now, every nerve in my body is tired of it.

Viktor softens, and he closes the distance between us. He cups my face in his hands. I get distracted by his ridiculously thick eyelashes. They’re silver, even though most magazines photoshop them darker. I’ve stared at them in print for ages, but photos aren’t the same as the real thing.

“Then I want to do it right,” He breathes, his gaze so tender that my knees and my insides melt into a useless molten goo all at once. “When you’re ready.”

“I’m ready!” I bark out, and I can’t bear to look at him, so my eyes shoot to find his hands in my peripheral vision. He laughs, probably smiles, before kissing me on the corner of my mouth.

“If I only had my own place. With some privacy,” His voice is low and warm, and I almost hate him, like he’s doing this to me on purpose.

“I--I can get Phichit an AirBnB,” I stutter, opening my eyes to look to the corner of the rink where my phone is sitting. “I-I mean, that’s what we did when he was d-d-dating.” I have to add on, or Viktor will think Phichit and I have a whole plan set aside for this. Which we don’t--- not really. But my brain immediately supplies it. Because, while I love Phichit, I really don’t want to see his reaction if he walks in on…. That.

“Yuuri, there’s no rush. We have forever now.” Viktor smiles, kissing my cheek again, one of his hands sliding back to play with my hair. It’s one of his favorite things to do, even though his hair is way softer and prettier. He does it all the time-- even when it’s sweaty and in desperate need for a wash. But he looks happy, and I don’t want to ruin it.

“Oh,” I breath, and I can’t hold back the shiver that runs up my spine and jerks my entire body when his fingernails scrape my scalp. “Tomorrow?” I ask, because now that he’s brought it up, I can’t get it out of my mind.

“I don’t know if I can wait that long with you looking at me like this,” Viktor purrs into my ear. I’m incredibly turned on-- and pissed off.

“You just said to wait! There’s no rush!” I growl in frustration, kicking my toe pick into the ice. I immediately regret it, and not because of the spray of ice clinging to Viktor’s pants.

It’s his face.

He looks terrified.

“Viktor?” My shoulders hunch, and I subconsciously drift backwards. “I-I’m sorry?” I don’t know what killed the mood so instantly, but the adrenaline of panic is already pushing out from my heart and making my hands shake and my veins run cold.

“You growled,” His expression doesn’t change.

“I was… frustrated.” Shame mixes in with the panic, my hands fluttering by my sides before I twist them behind me. Viktor lifts his arms, folding them and tapping his bottom lip, deep in thought.  
Before he can open his mouth, I turn and fly to the other side of the rink. I ignore my hard-guards and go straight into the locker room. Celestino can lecture me about caring for the rink and my blades later. 

I have to go.


	2. Viktor

**Viktor**

**55F  12 C**

I catch Yuuri before he manages to leave, but only because his hands are shaking so much that he cannot untie his laces.

 

I kneel at his feet, even though my bad knee screams at me, and take the loops from his hand. The floor is wet with small raindrops of tears, but I don’t look up at my darlings face just yet. He doesn’t move when I tug off the boot, or when I reverently slip his sneakers back onto his feet.  I rest my head on his knees, my cheek against the soft fabric of his sweatpants.

 

“I’m terrified you’ll change.” I pause, and his whimpers and sniffles intonate upward into a nonverbal question.   “Into a wolf. That you’ll lose your humanity, and it will be all my fault.”

 

“It’s been almost a year,” Yuuri sniffles. His knees jerk with each hiccup that he holds back, and my ankles ache too, but I don’t want to move. “... you were the one who saved me,” He whispers, his fingers finding the back of my head, resting in the whorl of hair that grows into my bangs.

 

“I was the reason they found you,” The lump in my throat grows bigger. It’s quiet for a long, excruciating moment.

 

“I think it worked out okay in the end,”  His tone is falsely cheerful and rough at the edges.

 

“Didn’t it?”  I manage to grimace, and his fingers retreat from touching my hair. “I’m just scared that my luck will run out.”

 

“Says the five-time world champion,” Yuuri scoffs in his quiet, private way.

 

“Exactly,”  I rest my hand on his knee, cupping it in my palm. “I made the choice to skate. I made the choice to leave.  You didn’t choose to die in that snowbank.”

 

“I didn’t choose to fall in love with you either,” Yuuri mutters stubbornly, “Some things are bigger than the choices we make.”

 

My heart swells with love enough that it hurts. Yuuri will never say he is good with words, but  I prefer it that way. Between his stutters and mutters are the most honest and heartfelt words I’ve ever heard.

 

“I’m not upset with you, Yuuri. Never.” I finally look up. His eyes and the tip of his nose are red, and he is staring off in a corner of the locker room. “I’m mad at myself. At the choices I made.”

 

“But… you’re here. You aren’t a wolf… I didn’t change either. You said we have forever.” 

 

I watch him chew on his bottom lip, and I want to kiss him into stopping it.  How he manages to be so beautiful and perfect so effortlessly, without chapstick or lotion or anything other than the bare minimum-- astounds me. 

 

“I  guess… I have to forgive myself first.”

  
  



	3. Viktor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Beta reccomends tissues for this chapter ;3

Viktor  
69 F 20 C inside  
Yuuri is curled up next to me on the couch, his phone in my hand, when I dial the number. 

For once, I’m grateful that I grew up in the short time before cellphones were commonplace, and I have his private number memorized. (Still, after all these years) I tap it into Yuuri’s calling app and hit send.

“Da,” Yakov picks up. I had almost wished he would ignore an American number, but it was not so. Yakov is too well known, and I know that Celestino talks with him. It’s part of the reason why Yuuri came to Detroit.

“Yakov,” I breathe. “It’s me.” I had rehearsed something less stupid sounding, but any script in my mind goes out the window.

“Enough, I do not have time for these pranks anymore,” Yakov snaps, “How many years will it take for you people to stop?”

“I… I guess twelve, the same amount of time it took for you to quit smoking,” I blink away the tears forming in my eyes. Yuuri doesn’t understand a thing--- my tongue slips easily back into Russian, but he can read me like an open book, and he rests his hand on my arm.  
The line is quiet enough that I have to take it from my ear to check to see if he hung up.

“Vitya?” His voice is rough, not with anger, but something darker and heavier.

“The one and only,” I can’t help my own voice from wobbling.

“My stupid boy! You’re alive! All this time and nothing?” His voice is between a bark and a sob. “Where are you? Are you safe?”

I look toward Yuuri. He’s in his pajamas, his feet curled underneath him. His socks are brown and fuzzy, the toes printed to look like the head of a poodle, and the heel the ass of one. He’s reading an old American novel for one of his required courses, his electronic dictionary cradled in his lap.

“Yes. The safest I’ve been in years.” I muse. It’s true. “Healthy.” Yuuri’s thigh is warm, pressing up against mine. 

“We’ve been looking for years, Vitya. Years. What were you hiding from? Is there something I don’t know?”

“I’m with my boyfriend.” It’s not what he wants to know, but it feels important to say.

Yakov clears his throat.

“We all knew you were gay as the sun is warm, Vitya. Tell me. What do you need? Where are you?”

“I--I’m with Yuuri Katsuki.” There’s no points in keeping it a secret. He’ll find out soon enough anyway.

“Eh? Japan, are you? Did he keep you hostage?” Yakov barks. I’ve almost missed it.

“No! No.. Yakov… I…. No one kidnapped me. I left on my own.”

The line goes quiet again.

“I…. I’m still in America. A few hours from where I disappeared. I…. I followed someone, who gave me a choice. I… I just got out of it.”

“Boy, are you saying a cult?” Yakov growls.

“In...a way, I guess.” Yuuri closes his book, using his thumb to keep his place in the paperback. He looks up at me with concern--- He can read every bit of unease in me.

“But that part of my life is over.” I say in a rush. “I found Yuuri. I want to go support him at Skate Canada.”

Yakov breaths. “Fine. You come home to Russia, I will arrange passes for you--”

“I’m not going home.” I say too fast, too loudly.

“Vitya… please.” Yakov sounds more like an old man now than he has ever. “Please-- whatever I did, I will give my everything to repair--”

“Yakov. You didn’t do anything wrong. You gave me everything I wanted!” I straighten my spine, my voice subconsciously rising. “I left because I was tired of living. I couldn’t surprise anyone, not even myself. I was scared. Of everything. Of dying. I left-- I left because I found a way into slow suicide, okay? I was too scared to do it myself, and someone gave me the chance.”

“Are you healthy, Vitya? Are you?”

I don’t know what to say.

Compared to Yuuri? Yes. I can make it four weeks without laying in bed with a fever. I can walk on my own. My lungs breathe freely.

But I’ve always been ‘healthy’. I just haven’t been well.

“I’m… better. I promise.” Yuuri has long forgotten reading, , and his hand has slid from my arm to my hand, his fingers interlaced with mine. “I… I’ll come visit. Soon. My Yuuri has to finish school, and…” We haven’t discussed plans beyond that. Yuuri finishing school is his goal, not mine. I haven’t been able to plan beyond the summer for years. 

It’s the first time I’ve realized this. That I don’t have an expiry date anymore. I’m no longer a seasonal ghost in my life. Or in Yuuri’s.

I had been so focused on not leaving him behind that I didn’t consider what it meant for me. Or Yakov. Or Yuri, who wasn’t even old enough for Juniors when I left. I know that he’s competing at the Senior level this season. Yuuri is skating my last full choreography. The world has moved on without me.

“I’ll call again later. Promise.” I say, hanging up before Yakov can reply. I know he will save the number. I know it will route him to Celestino’s home address, and not directly to me. Yuuri told me so, when I told him of my plan to call Yakov, and my need to be careful. 

Yuuri is rubbing small circles on the back of my hand, his cheek pressed into my shoulder.

“How did it go?” He asks, and for some reason, the English is jarring.

“Better than I expected.” 

He shifts, sitting on his legs and staring concernedly into my eyes. “You’re crying.” He touches my cheek in wonder, wiping a tear away.

“Huh.” I blink, and suddenly my cheeks are wet.

“We can talk about it,” Yuuri crawls into my lap, cupping my face in his hands. He is so, so warm. Soft. Home. “Or… not.” His thumb smooths under my eyes.

“I don't know what I’m going to do, starlight.” I sigh. I rest my head on his shoulder, and he presses a kiss to the crown of my head.

“Is he coming?” His touch against my back is light and unsure.

“I…. I don’t think so. But that’s not what I meant.”

“So… real life problems?” Yuuri’s hand rests on the nape of my neck.

“...yes.” He can tell instantly that I’m wondering how he knew exactly what I was worrying about.

“Well… you can get a job now. That’s not just some summer college gig. We can get our own apartment.”

He blushes when I smile brightly. I feel lighter already. “You want to live together?”

“We… don’t we already?” Yuuri mumbles. He’s right. I started on the couch, but I sleep in Yuuri’s bed more often than not. We skipped over casual dating and went right to cohabitation.

“You know what I mean.” I tease, swallowing back the nerves that rise in my throat. “Live together. For our entire lives.”

“That sounds like a marriage proposal.” Yuuri mumbles, hiding his face.

“Is that so bad? “ I reply without thinking. “I’d marry you.”

Yuuri slides back onto the rest of the couch, flopping into the cushion and moaning. “I’m going to die.”

“Is that a no?” I set down his phone on the coffee table, before taking my chance. I crawl on top of him, taking his hips and pushing them until he flips over.

He stares up at me, his eyes glimmering (sparkling?). He arches his back until his lips meet mine. He kisses me longer than he ever has before. His ankles, covered in the fuzzy poodle socks, presses into the small of my back. 

It sounds stupid, but the first thing out of my mouth is “Wow, you’re flexible.”  
Somehow, terribly, Yuuri is still turned on by it. He bucks his hips up against mine, his warm lips kissing my jaw just below my ear.

“Yuuri, please. I won’t be able to stop.” I try to sound pitiful, but it comes out in a purr when he nibbles at my earlobe.

“Then don’t.”


	4. Yuuri

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there's sex.

**Yuuri**

**69F 20C**

Viktor finally listens. He doesn’t pull back this time. He surges forward, pressing down and rocking his hips against mine. We stretch out the full length of the couch, and his hand slips under my shirt. He rubs at my nipples, before he changes his mind and pushes my shirt up. He smiles when a noise escapes my throat-- it’s cold, even though Viktor is warm, kissing and sucking at my skin.  

  


“W-w-wait.” I stutter, gasping when he kisses a sensitive spot on the side of my neck. I squirm underneath him, patting the table until I find my cell phone.

  


“Yuuuuuri,” Viktor whines. “Isn’t this better than your games?”   I slide back underneath him, tapping out a quick text. His pout immediately disappears the second I look at him, my irritation kept at bay with the heat pooling in the pit of my stomach. 

“Phichit won’t come home for another two hours.” I say flatly. Viktor smiles, before he leans down and bites at my skin until it leaves a mark.

  


“Yuuri, “ He breaths. “Such stamina already.” 

  


Part of me hopes I don’t.  I’ve never lasted that long by myself,  but I have no frame of reference. Movies always cut it to two minute scenes.  Phichit and I have accidentally wandered into porn shops during our first few weeks here… but I’ve never watched any. There weren’t any with Viktor, and I just wasn’t interested.

  


It was fine. Until now.

  


When I try to return the favor, he pulls away. I swallow back the spark of irritation it lights in me, it fizzling out the second he pulls at the waistband of my pants. He looks up at me, eyes heavy-lidded and lustful. He waits until I nod, before he pulls them off entirely.  I’ve been hard since he pushed me out onto the couch, but he acts like he just realizes it, palming me before pulling me out of my boxers. His hand wraps around me, his thumb rubbing at the head. His tongue is heavy against it, and he barely has me in his mouth before it’s too much. My body twists and jerks, and I thrust.  He chokes, sputtering, and I immediately scoot away.

  


“HolyshitI’msosorry--” I stare as he catches his breath, his hand firm on my thigh.

  


“Wow Yuuri.. .That’s the deepest I’ve ever had anyone..” His voice is rough as his eyelashes flutter, and any embarrassment that would have me soft is gone.  


	5. VIktor- Love

Viktor  
69F 20 C  
He is a shaking mess, and I adore it. He is absolutely still when I take him in my mouth again. He isn’t quiet though, and after I lick up his shaft, he shyly touches the back of my head. When I purr with him in my mouth, he gets even braver. He plays with my hair--- while its the first time I’ve experienced it, I instantly add it to my book of favorite things. It goes next to Yuuri knowing exactly how I like my coffee. 

I lap at him until I can taste pre-come on my tongue. My hands slip from his thighs--- thighs I’d gladly have wrapped around my head-- to his ass.

“W--wait.” He stutters, though he automatically raises his hips to let my hands underneath him.

I am a patient man. I wait, taking the opportunity to kiss a soft expanse of his skin. I want to taste all of him, to take him apart bit by bit until he’s completely wrecked.

“W---what about you?” Yuuri gasps, pulling out of my hold.

“I don’t need any help, believe me.” I purr, but Yuuri just looks disappointed. “Yuuri… you’re perfect. I don’t need you to do anything.”

“But… I want to.”

“Let’s get you first.” I smooth back his hair. For a second, I worry that he’s feverish again, before I remember that this is normal. The heat of two bodies is overwhelming and decadent.

“No.” Yuuri pushes me away when I move to take him into my mouth again. He licks his lips, and I consider letting him take over for a split second.

“Then both of us,” I say, taking his hand in mine. His hands are smooth under mine, and all it takes is a gentle push before he understands. Just his hands on me, fingers tugging at my waistband, brushing against my skin, is almost unbearable. He shifts forward until I can hold both of us in a fist. Yuuri’s hand pushes mine away, and he takes my cock in his hand, his face beautifully flushed. 

“Yuuri, you can’t just look,” I tease. But he flinches, squeezing almost too tightly before holding too gently.

“I want.. To taste you…” His voice drops into an embarrassed mumble, his gaze averted.

“I want you to think of yourself, not me, solnyshko.” I sigh, moving my hand and stroking us together. A pitiful noises escape from Yuuri.

“Then… talk to me,”

“I am.” I slow down, worried that this is becoming less mutual.

“In Russian.” Yuuri whispers, shy, but his hips buck forward, and he thrusts into my hand.

“I would do whatever you ask me to, if it meant that I got to hold you a minute longer,” I could recite poetry, or say filthy things about Yuuri, and how much I want him. But I can’t. I just want to tell Yuuri what he means to me in a moment he can’t immediately refute me with ‘I’m-not-worth its” and “not-reallys’.

It doesn’t matter-- I’ve helped Yuuri discover a kink. He comes before I finish my sentence. His grip underneath mine tightens, his teeth scraping my shoulder when he finishes crying out. He purrs like a kitten, and rubs against me like one too. I bite back my orgasm- just so Yuuri won’t draw back. The pleasure washed over him makes me cling to me, and I relish it. We take a shower together, taking every minute of the two hours Yuuri earned us. 

Yuuri is my first. It’s what I’ll count him as. He may not be the first I’ve touched, or the first who has touched me. But it’s the first time that I scrub myself clean without a nagging sense of shame. It's the first time I come and the pleasure floats in my veins instead of draining away, left behind on the floor of a hotel room.

Yuuri’s neck is littered with a jeweled string of bruises from my teeth. I catch him looking in the mirror, panic spiking in my chest when his hand smooths over them. But then he smiles, just barely so, and my fear is unfounded. His sweater hides most of them, except for one high on his neck, just behind his ear. I want to keep it there, commit it as a permanent memento of tonight. It’s not even the most I’ve done with a man, but something about Yuuri makes it feel significant.

Maybe it is love?


	6. Viktor

Viktor  
49F 9C  
I am hopelessly, stupidly head over heels in love.

It’s the last weekend before Yuuri leaves for competition. Traveling won’t start until Thursday, but it's Saturday and that means pancakes.

Yuuri is an artist. His first pancake is a poodle, a piece of bacon peeking out like a tongue.

My heart aches. I know Makkachin is well loved for. Yuri, as little as I remember him, is a god among men, and regularly posts pictures of her on instagram. He’s just entered the Senior division and will be the brightest Star russia will ever have.

Makka lives with Yakov now. 

He makes a puffy-cheeked hamster for Phichit before making his own breakfast. He makes simple round ones, finishing them in a matter of seconds instead of minutes.

“Yuuri…” I try to sound disappointed when he joins us at the table. There’s a bowl of sliced strawberries, a small cup of thawed frozen blueberries, and a jar of maple syrup shaped like a woman in a dress.

“How come you didn’t make a Viktor pancake?” Phichit quips. Yuuri just blushes adorably, spreading a dollop of peanut butter across his boring pancakes.  
“I would get jealous.” I tease, and Yuuri gets even more flustered when I add “I only want him to taste me.”  
“Still waiting for that Airbnb booking!” Phichit sings, spearing a strawberry with a fork and popping it into his mouth. Yuuri chokes on his bite of pancake.

“Tonight?” I ask Yuuri, even though Phichits eyes are sparkling with curiosity. “We can go out to dinner.”

We have been close every night since our first step into...that part of our relationship. It’s been all hands and lips and soft breaths. I held back the first night, until Yuuri’s hands slipped around me. I haven’t been able to resist since. I knew Yuuri was smart from watching him study for college, but I didn’t think he’d be such a quick learner between the sheets. 

I thought that it would get old, that I’d get tired of the pleasure. But then Yuuri curls around me, and it is another night in the best week of my love life.

Yuuri looks like a deer in the headlight, before he props his head in his hands, his fork balancing on his fingers. “Okay.” He says with a soft smile.

He plays with his food the entire time we eat. He nurses his tea, while Phichit brews another pot of coffee between telling us about the latest Youtube drama. An entire culture has developed over the years I have been gone. Even with spending the summers as a human, I avoided the internet. I’ve only ever been brave enough to look up Yuri, who had been the first to follow trends when I knew him as a little brat. Yuuri is a good listener, introvert that he is. He laughs at the right times and even offers his own opinion. I just listen, distracted by watching his hands move and his eyes sparkle with laughter.

I pretend not to notice when we clean up, and Yuuri’s plate is the only one not scraped clean. It’s half-eaten, picked and shredded to crumbs. Yuuri looks up at me when I smooth a hand against his forehead, pushing his hair back. He just smiles, used to the concern. His skin isn’t any warmer than it should be. I leave his hair pushed back, and relish the few strands that fall back to his forehead..

“You should wear your hair like that on the ice.” Phichit says from his spot on the counter where he is drying off the dishes with a faded towel. It once had a floral print, and deserved to die before they purchased it at the thrift store.

“I’d just mess it up.” Yuuri scrubs the strawberry bowl a little too hard, his hands coming up coated with a film of soap suds.

“I’ll do it for you.” I take the dish from him, kissing him while I blindly rinse the dish.   
He looks excited, for the first time in days, instead of nervous or exhausted.

“Can we skate?” Yuuri asks, even though its his rest day.

“You need to rest. I’ll be able to see the skate in Nagoya.” I take the last dish from his hand, feeling a little guilty that his smile dimmed.

“Not.. practice. I just want to go together.” He pulls the plug in the sink. Phichit is leaning against the countertop, arms crossed in front of him. 

“Am I invited? Viktor’s my friend too.” Phichit pouts. Yuuri’s smile is back and he nods enthusiastically.


	7. Phichit- Glass Heart

Phichit  
49F 9 C  
I know Yuuri thinks I don’t approve of Viktor. I haven’t exactly acted like it. You could even take me injecting him with a deadly virus as a way to get him out of the picture. But Yuuri would never accuse me of that. And I do like Viktor.

Especially now that Viktor can’t break Yuuri’s glass heart.

Well, if he does, then I won’t have to do any animal tracking to find and murder him.

My stupid idea worked. Viktor doesn’t even shiver when we step onto the ice. He’s in rental skates, which I can tell he hates. Yuuri and I have our custom boots and blades that are like extensions of our feet. The rink, despite hosting plenty of skate and hockey clubs, probably only sharpens rental skates under duress.

He doesn’t shudder into growing fur. He swings Yuuri around in a spin, laughing with him like a sickenly sweet couple. I would almost be bitter about it, but Yuuri deserves this. He coached me through my first college relationship, and the awful dumping that followed three weeks after. When I freaked out at him over maybe-having-sex with a guy I liked a month later, he went and bought me a box of condoms and lube with his scholarship money and sent me a youtube tutorial link about safe sex. He hugged me during my first-semester freakout over declaring Pre-Med, and held me until I fell asleep. I woke up with him drooling on me, but when you live thousands of miles from your family, it's the little things that matter.

So I can’t begrudge him. Especially when his idol is with him on the ice, chasing after him. Viktor manages a double turn before pressing a kiss to Yuuri’s cheek. I haven’t seen him smile this wide and so freely in a while. They hold hands around the rink. Yuuri even shows Viktor part of our Single Ladies skate, before Viktor begs to take a video of it so he can watch it for hours. Yuuri turns red as a tomato and hides his face, denying Viktor the chance.

When Viktor pulls Yuuri around the ice, hand in hand, Yuuri reaches out for mine. We skate in a row, breathless, Yuuri’s hand squeezing mine when we take a corner.

“We should do an ice show!” Viktor sings, his stupid heart-smile bright before we let go of each other all at once, drifting across the ice.

“YUURI.” Celestino’s voice echoes over the ice. 

It’s the public skate time, not practice. It’s also winter, so most people interested in winter sports are doing it at the temporary rink in the city center.


	8. Viktor- Bruise

**Viktor**

**35 F 2 C**

 

The color immediately drains from Yuuri’s face. His back straightens, and he glides to the boards in two easy sweeps. 

 

Celestino looks older than I remember. He still looks like a statue, his brown hair streaked with gray.

 

“All of you!” He yells with the same command. I follow Yuuri onto the ice. We sit on a bench in a row like scolded school children. Yuuri’s back is straight, posture perfect, but his gaze is glued to the floor, and he looks petrified.

 

“Ciao Ciao, he isn’t doing any jumps, I made sure--” Phichit interjects, but Celestino isn’t looking at either of his students.

 

“What are you doing here? What scheme are you tangling my boys into?” Celestino’s gaze is hard-- not sharp, but not friendly either.  It bores into me in a way I haven’t felt in years.

 

“I---...”  

Phichit immediately interrupts me, speaking too fast for my brain to parse. Celestino holds out a hand, and Phichit’s mouth snaps shut.

 

“There’s no scheme, sir.” I manage.

 

“You’ve been missing for four years, and show up in my rink, and there’s no scheme?” Celestino is firm. I wonder how well he coaches Yuuri, being this cold and formal.

 

“You better have a good explanation. You belong in Russia. Your entire  country mourned for you.”

 

I can see Yuuri’s hands curl into fists on his knees in the corner of my eye.

 

“I didn’t believe Yakov when he called me, but to see you on the ice with my own eyes. For how long? Yuuri and Phichit have enough pressure without having to hide a scandal like this.”

 

“It’s not a scandal!” Yuuri’s voice breaks,  his knees wobbling as he jumps onto his feet. “He was changed into a werewolf, and he saved me from the other wolves, but he changes into a wolf in the winter! Except Phichit heard something from his professor, so he tried to get a fever to stop changing.  He was gone for two weeks, and I thought he was dead.He came back, and he’s human, and I l-love him.”

 

Celestino’s eyes are wide, as are Phichit’’s. They’re both surprised at his outburst. I would be, but it's quickly replaced by anger.

 

“Yuuri, do you hear what you are saying? Do we need to talk to Dr. Bennett?” Celestino's voice is softer with Yuuri, but there is still an edge of anger to it.

 

“I’m-- not---crazy!” Yuuri bites out, his knuckles white by his sides. Tears stream down his cheeks.

 

“He’s right.” Phichit adds, quiet from his corner of the bench.

 

“I quit.”  Yuuri spits the word like venom, and the surge of protectiveness swimming in me twists into something sick.

 

“Yuuri, hold on-!” Phichit interjects at the same time Celestino says his name, pleading.  My eyes are burning, but I can’t cry. It’s been so long, I just hold onto the anger.

 

“I can’t compete without a coach.” Yuuri says evenly, his red eyes  trained on the ground.

 

“Yuuri, just explain--” Phichit whines.

 

“Don’t be so rash, Yuuri.  We can talk.” Celestino sounds hurt. He must be softer than Yakov when he needs to be.

 

At a loss of what to do, I kneel at Yuuri’s feet.  He wobbles before sinking back onto the bench. I unlace his skates methodically, setting them between me and Phichit. I roll off his socks, damp with sweat.

 

My mouth betrays me with a hollow gasp.

 

His entire foot is one bruise-- from purple toes to the mottled shadow of the tongue of his boot. The second foot is no better, purple with fresh blood. It isn’t the simple joining of multiple bruises either-- I’ve had my share of black toenails and wounded feet before a competition.

 

“Yuuri, what on earth--” Celestino sounds shaken. I can’t focus on him too much. I lift Yuuri’s shirt, searching for the spot on his side I had playfully bumped with my hip an hour earlier.

 

It’s the same color, darker in the middle, disappearing into the waistband of his sweatpants.

 

“You said you were healthy,” Phichit says quietly.

 

“I am.” Yuuri licks his lips, as if he can taste the bitter lie on his tongue.


	9. Yuuri- A Thank You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oh my god, why did I make this chapter so long???

Yuuri  
35F 2C  
“There’s no way you can compete like this, Yuuri,” Celestino says, his voice annoyingly soft.

“I’m not. I quit.” I bite out again. Viktors fingers are cold as they brush over my skin. I flinch, and he immediately draws back.

“Yuuri, I know you can be intense when you’re upset. Let’s talk about this later.” Celestino sounds like my mother, and it pisses me off.

“I said I was fine. I told you everything. If you don’t believe me… I can’t… I can’t do anything else.” I stutter.

“Honestly, Yuuri. It sounds like a story, but it’s better than being held hostage or being abused. I’ll take it, if it means that you aren’t in danger.” Celestino doesn’t move from his spot.

“I’m not.”

“You’re not healthy though.” Phichit mutters under his breath.

“I’ll bring you to the hospital.” Celestino offers. “All of you.”

“You don’t have to. I’m not your student anymore.” I mutter.

Celestino just says “We’ll revisit the topic later.”

“We’d appreciate a ride,” Viktor says quietly.

“For what? It’s just a couple of bruises. My insurance isn’t going to cover that!” I bite out.

It takes another ten minutes before Celestino sighs and agrees to drive us back to the apartment. Viktor waves as he drives off, even though Celestino waits at the end of the block until we go inside.

 

Viktor makes me a nest of every pillow and blanket on the couch. He treats me gingerly, but he really doesn’t need to. My feet don’t hurt.

What bothers me is by bones-- the constant ache in my bones that begs to stretch.   
I don’t feel like I belong in my own skin.

I let Phichit relate the same story, but in more detail. He talks quietly at the dinner table with Viktor, before leaving me with a soft pat on the shoulder.

He doesn’t ask, but I have already emailed Minako-sensei about missing Nagoya.

“Let’s stay in?” Viktor hums when he curls onto the couch next to me. I’ve pointedly been left out of the last hour of conversation, and I’m mad.

“We’re going.” I bite out. I show him the screen of my phone-- one night in a mother-in-law house on the good side of town. 

“I don’t really want to leave you alone, Yuuri..” Phichit says softly from the kitchen.

“I’m not going to be alone.” My anger comes out at Phichit, who is the most innocent in this situation. “If I die, I’m going to haunt you for denying me this.”

Viktor looks stunned, before he bites his lip and nods. He goes into the bedroom, coming out with the one suit I own. He has a dark purple shirt and black vest from our last date, but he ends up looking even nicer once he pulls on his coat.

I feel stupid in the suit-- its a couple years old. I got it at a department store in Hasetsu and It’s a little short in the sleeves and wide at the waist now. I fight ripping it off and canceling everything, stealing some of Viktor’s hair product to comb my hair back off my forehead. It smells like him, which helps soothe my raw nerves a little. His reaction helps a little too-- he pulls me into a kiss, and touches me in a way I almost think he likes the suit.

He puts my coat on for me, reaching for my black knit hat. He pulls it over his head instead, half-smiling at me. We wait in the hallway until the Uber arrives. Even though its booked on my phone, Viktor doesn’t allow me to find out where we’re going. It takes 40 minutes to get there-- we’ve long left the college and woods behind. We get out in the middle of the city, the winter sun already set. Everything glitters with light though. Christmas starts after halloween here, so the bare trees are covered in fairy lights in a rainbow of colors.

Dinner doesn’t really matter. It’s in a place that has real candles and a wine menu. I’m not hungry, and nothing on the menu has a price. I’ve had 50 cent ramen with Viktor before and it tasted good. But Viktor orders a plate of canapes and a bottle of wine and feeds me by hand. We share a plate of duck confit and ratatouille. The bill is probably comparable to my part of the rent , but I can’t muster up enough regret. The duck meat melts in my mouth, and the fat makes Viktor’s lip glisten irresistibly. We get a bottle of dessert wine and a generous slice of opera cake. It’s not my favorite--the almond cake is gritty and the coffee liqueur is heavy on my tongue, but Viktor revels in it. He pulls out a new card-- a black credit card with a chip on it. I only notice it because it's new. Viktor just smiles at me and distracts me with a kiss.

We leave the restaurant floating. Viktor tucks his hands in my pockets, tucking his mouth against my neck. 

“It’s early,” I whine, though I lean into his mouth. His arms squeeze around me.

“Let’s go dancing?” Viktor says into my neck. I shiver, and he misreads it. He pulls me back into the restaurant,stealing my phone from my pocket to find our next stop.

I expect a nightclub, but we end up at the Century Ballroom. There’s a cover-charge, which Viktor pays without so much a blink.

“I can lead.” He says after we hang up our coats and walk onto the floor. The walls are dimly lit and covered with red velvet. Most of the light comes from the crystal chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling.There’s an orchestra pit and a stage, but the music comes over the speakers. It’s still early in the night, and most of the other patrons are in their sixties and seventies.

It’s also a waltz, and I know Minako would murder me if I played stupid with the first ballroom dance she taught me.

We end up following each other, reading the soft pressure we put against each others hands perfectly. He smiles like the sun when I lead him into a spin. The ballroom swings around us, the other couples spinning around us like planets in a solar system. We take a break when they announce the start of salsa hour. Viktor orders two glasses of brut champagne, and comes back with tumblrs of sangria gifted to him by a white-haired couple.  
They greet us at the tabled in a corner of the ballroom. Thankfully Viktor talks to them for me, letting me hide behind my glass. I haven’t noticed anyone else, my eyes only on Viktor, but I realize that they’re both women. They stand with their hands on each others backs, complimenting Viktor on his footwork. Their spotted and soft hands glint with gold rings.

I know it's rude, but I take out of my phone. Viktor squeezes my side-- they’re complimenting me too, but it doesn’t matter. The only thing that has stuck is that they have a scottish terrier at home.

There’s a Kays jewelers two blocks away, closing in half an hour.

I have ten minutes by the time I finish my drinks and conversation has waned.

“I have to go.” I swallow, both my hands resting on Viktor’s chest. He’s still smiling from the conversation with the elderly women.

“Bathroom is behind us.” He smooths my hair back with a tender look. “Are you okay?”

“Out.. I have to go out.” I don’t know how to explain it, so I take his hand instead. We don’t have time to get our coats, even though Viktor tries to talk to the hostess. I pull him down the street, our breaths coming out in a cloud as we jog down the sidewalk.

“Yuuri, can we talk somewhere warmer?” Viktor breaths, before I stop short.

“Here.” It’s rare to see a jewelry that's not inside a grocery store or mall, but we are in the rich part of town. A bell rings when I push open the door, the single employee looking up with interest.

“I need to see your rings, please.” I’m still out of breath from jay-walking across the street. Viktor freezes to the spot, so I leave him behind when the employee gestures to a glass case.

“T---those ones, please.” It’s a set, meant for one person, but the snowflake fits together so nicely, I can’t leave it in the case.

It’s meant to be. It fits perfectly on Viktors finger. My hands shake a little. Viktor slides the second ring onto my hand. It’s a little loose, but the employee immediately offers a plastic piece that fits on the ring to keep it snug.

I hand over my credit card without a second thought. It’s ten minutes after closing when we leave, but I don’t think the employee will mind his part of the commission.

“Yuuri,” Viktor breathes. “What….what exactly does this mean?” His hand sparkles in the light from the shop window.

“I… I just wanted something… as a thank you.”

“Thank you? For what?”

“For being with me. For staying. For coming back.” I swallow back a surge of awkward emotion. 

“You don’t need to thank me for that. I’d do it a million times over.” Viktor kisses the ring on his hand, before he steps forward and leans down, kissing me on the lips. Its different than before. It’s slow and sweet and hungry. He lingers, his hands winding around me. His tongue runs against my bottom lip, but he doesn’t do any more. He rests his forehead against mine, and when I open my eyes, his eyes are closed, his eyelashes damp and his lips curved into a smile.

“People will think we’re married.” 

“I’m okay with that.” I say a little too quickly. I turn red, I can feel my cheeks burn, but Viktor just smiles brightly.

“We should get married then,” Viktor hugs me closer, our chests pressed against each other.

“We can’t-- I mean-- this isn’t Las Vegas. I don’t even know how to get married. Back home you go to the city office…”

“Let’s get married in Japan then.” Viktor starts speaking faster, like he tends to do when he’s excited. 

“O...okay.” I never imagined meeting my family with Viktor. I never saw past this winter, when he was supposed to disappear into the woods again. Would it be so bad? Hasetsu is smaller than Detroit by a long shot. There are a million more trees and empty lots. There are probably wolves hiding in the woods. Right now, Yuuko and Takeshi are the only people around our age that still live in town. But Viktor could skate at ice Castle, and he’d drive tourism back to the town…

“Viktor Katsuki.” Viktor sings, looking up into the night sky. “I like it.”

“I wanted Yuuri Nikiforov.” I sound angrier than I mean to… but I feel defensive. Viktor has known me for a year, but I have been fantasizing for years.

“Okay. Katsuki-Nikiforov it is.” Viktor relents easily. I smile, but my teeth start to chatter.

“Let’s get our coats?” Viktor notices immediately. 

“But...salsa hour.” We start walking back to the ballroom, hand in hand anyway.

“Salsa isn’t as sensual as I’m feeling right now.” Viktor hums, lifting our hands and kissing the ring on my hand. “We can come back tomorrow.”

“What about the ladies?” It feels like a waste to leave so soon. Viktor laughs.

“They loved you more than me. We reminded them of when they were younger. It was fun singing your praises, but I think they would rather dance.”

I feel my face flush again. “Oh.”

I book an uber while Viktor helps me into my coat again. In the back seat, he drapes himself over me. I’m thankful that the driver seems to only speak Spanish and isn’t interested in conversation or mirrors. Viktor kisses at my neck, his teeth scraping at the sensitive skin. A stupid moan escapes my lips, and I feel Viktor smile. He kisses me faster, his hand drifting down to my pants, his hand cupping and palming the fly of my slacks.

“T---they charge for cleanup, Viktor,” I whisper, before I gasp. The half hour drive is torture. I play with Viktor’s hair to try to get back at him, but he still isn’t as shy as I am. He just smiles, his fingers teasing at the skin on my stomach.

“Thank you!” He sings when he pull up in front of the apartment. He slides out of the car easily, leaving me alone, hot and bothered for a split second. I manage to leave the biggest tip possible on the app before Viktor pressed me up against the kitchen counter.

“Huh? Viktor, we eat here.” He lifts me up onto the counter, kissing me while he unbuttons my shirt.

“Vitya.” He corrects me. “If we’re going to be married, Vitya.”

“Vitya,” I groan, pushing Phichit’s cereal bowl into the sink. “You said it would be romant---oh.” His tongue is wet against my nipple. It feels perverted, still half-dressed in the most expensive part of my wardrobe.

“I’m sorry, solnyshko.” Viktor breathes, and I it does things to me. He looks embarrassed, which he never does, and I want to see more of it. I want to be the one who has it together for once, instead of always the one embarassed and freaking out.  
He stands between my legs, cheeks and nose red with cold and something else. I grip the counter with my hands to stop the shaking and reach deep inside me to scrape together all the confidence I have. 

“I didn’t say stop.” I lift my knees until I can toe at the fly of his pants. I feel stupid, and kind of terrified that he will laugh at me. But revenge is sweet. He chokes. I kick off my shoes, but keep my socks on. They don’t hurt, but I can’t forget the bruises from that afternoon. I curl my toes against his cloth-covered bulge, before pressing my arch and my heel against the heat of it.

“Y---yuuuuri,” Viktor stutters, and I want to hear more of him being wrecked. The embarassment clashes with the glee of seeing Viktor look like a mess. I feel all powerful, taking him apart just by touching him fully clothed.

“I was right, Vitya.” He’d only kissed my skates a few times, but after every practice he’d give me a foot rub. It was only a sneaking suspicion. Tonight was a stupid gamble,but I hit the jackpot. “Take me to bed.” My mouth is dry with nerves

I couldn't stand doing it in the kitchen. Not yet. Waking up every morning, sharing it with Phichit. It would be too much. I already can’t get Viktor out of my head. I need one spot in my life where I don’t see Viktor in my hands, where I don’t dream about him touching me.

Viktor unwraps me like a present, folding each piece of clothing and setting it at the end of my bed. It’s kind of infuriating to wait, so I go to take off his clothes. I place a kiss on him for each button I do, including the one at his waistband.

My heart skips a beat when he pulls back. I feel cold and empty without him there, but he doesn’t go far. He goes into the nightstand, pulling out a pack of condoms and a new bottle of lubricant. It looks like an expensive bottle of perfume, grey and silver and cut like a jewel.

“Lay down?” I fall back into the sheets, feeling exposed but somehow still safe. Nakedness isn’t a thing back home--- I spent my time growing up in a bath house. But with Viktor on his knees in front of me, it's almost too much.

I lift my hips as he guides my legs over his shoulders. My erection curls back onto my stomach, but Viktor isn’t looking. He slicks his hand up with a few pumps of lube, kissing the inside of my thigh. My skin is on fire, but it’s not a fever. It’s pure pleasure, better than the expensive wine or my favorite foot. It’s Viktor.

“Okay?” He asks, and I barely manage a “Yeah” when his fingers slide against me. He slips one finger in slowly, stopping when I gasp and take a shuddering breath.

“Yuuri?” He asks, perfectly still. His blue eyes are looking up at me from between my legs. I’m so screwed. Something in my stomach leaps, and I need more.

“Don’t stop.” He massages me from the inside, but I can see him between my legs, feel his smooth skin against the back of my legs. The stretch is nothing I’ve felt before. I’ve never been brave enough, but it makes my mouth water and body melt when he moves inside me. Viktor is all around me, and inside me too, and just the idea makes every cell in me vibrate.

“Good?” He asks when he has a third finger inside me.

 

“Mmmm. Good..” I bend my knees, trying to pull him closer by the shoulders.


	10. Viktor

**Viktor**

**69 F 20C**

Yuuri makes a soft keening noise when I slide my fingers out of him.  I bite my tongue-- I need to go slow. I’ve waited so long, and Yuuri deserves everything.   I roll on the condom as fast as I can while still being safe. I want to give Yuuri every bit of attention I wasn’t gifted before. He cries just at the touch of my head at his entrance, pushing forward. I still take it slow, even if he is over prepared. His breath comes fast when I push into him. He’s hot and tight, and he’s already  leaking precum onto his perfect stomach. When I bottom out, his hands reach up and pull at my hair, his feet coming at a rest at the small of my back. My heart swells with love-- I know he’s guessing, but he seems to know everything that turns me on.

 

I don’t have to ask anymore-- Yuuri sings my name, pulling me back each time I rock back. He  comes quickly, spilling down his stomach and up his chest, still not letting me go.

 

“Stay in,” He gasps when the wave of pleasure is finished washing over him. I feel close-- Yuuri tightened around me as he orgasmed-- and Yuuri is determined to make sure I enjoy myself just as much. His heels dig against me, and it’s enough. 

 

“Yuuri,” I cry out. I can’t bear to stay in him for longer. Being inside him is an another feeling altogether, but I want all of him pressed against me. Each inch of air between us is an impossible distance.

 

He curls around me the second I lay next to him, skin hot and sticky. He kisses at my jawline and plays his fingers through my hair. I smooth my hands over him-- over the  smallness of his waist, and the softness that clings to his thighs. His toes play against the skin of my calves. I never want to leave this-- I want Yuuri close to me every waking and sleeping moment.

 

“I love you more than life.” I breathe. I nuzzle Yuuri’s neck in return, before I notice his chest jerking in a gasp.

 

“Oh, love. Don’t cry.” I whisper. I try to wipe away the tears with my thumb, but they flow out of his eyes faster than I can wipe them away.

 

He sniffles, letting go of me to wipe at his face.  “I’m not.” He whimpers. “I’m happy.”

  
  


**Viktor**

**69F 20C**

I end up kissing his tears away. When his breathing smooths over, and I get enough of a taste of him against me, our hands begin to wander again. We manage to go through the entire bottle of lube before the night runs out. It’s the best thirty dollars I’ve spent in my life.  Yuuri is soft with his touches and hungry with his demands. I can tell he mimics what I do to him, trying it on me, but it works. Yuuri isn’t my first boyfriend Oliver, pushing and rough and uncaring. I can’t even call him a past lover anymore. Yuuri is my first  _ lover.  _   His love comes through every touch, every wet slip of his tongue against me. It’s a constant shine from his eyes. He hesitates, but he follows through every time.  My mind slips from wanting to give Yuuri everything to returning what good he has given me.

 

We end up  not bothering  to put on clothes, only borrowing a washcloth and a fresh blanket from the couch before falling asleep together. Yuuri sleeps like the dead. He’s supposed to go back to practice today, but his alarms are curiously silent.

 

I try to not let it worry me, and instead focus on his hands, light against my chest, and his dark head of hair tucked against me.   The bruise on his hip has grown larger, but its lighter on the edges. I keep myself from looking at his neck and shoulders, telling myself that I will wake him up if I move that much.

 

I lay with him for twenty minutes before I wrap him up in sheets and move to the kitchen.  Phichit promised not to return until noon, so we still have two hours of peace left.

I’ve finished making a second crepe when he emerges from the bedroom wrapped up like a burrito.  He leans against me, and I have to hold him back to avoid an edge of the blanket dipping into the stove burner.

 

“You’re naked,” He murmurs, his cheek resting against my back.

 

“So are you,”I laugh. It’s stupid to cook naked, but I wanted to be as sneaky as I can. Luckily, crepes are  a quick breakfast. By the time the coffee pot is finished, I have a plate full of crepes spread with raspberry  jam. 

Yuuri lets the blankets fall to his waist when we sit on the couch. We eat off the same plate, but my appetite vanishes when I see  his skin in the morning light.

 

Every bite and kiss has left a mark. It looks like he was beaten, his soft olive skin lost to purple.

 

The worst is his hands. The fingertips are dark. 

I think of the cancer that took my mother before I entered Juniors. 

 

But the thought immediately disappears. I can smell him sitting next to me.  I no longer have to press my nose to his skin. The wolf rolls off of him. 

 

It stays there even after the shower.  His skin reeks of it. I can taste it on him with every shy kiss.

 

But Phichit doesn’t say anything of it when he returns in the late afternoon.

 

His fever returns the morning he is set to leave for Nagoya.

  
  



	11. Phichit

Phichit  
49 F 9C  
Celestino has called every day Yuuri has missed practice. I’m thankful that he doesn’t bring me into it. Going to practice feels guilty enough. Ciao Ciao has only seen Yuuri at practice and during his thanksgiving dinner. This is the first time he’s seen how stubborn he is.

I don’t want Yuuri to ruin his season so early. Especially when he finally has qualified from the Grand Prix.

But I also am too scared to let him travel so far away. He has lost his grace, moving stiffly, like each joint is made of sandpaper. His fingertips are dark, but Viktor backs him up when he refuses to go the clinic.

 

I don’t have the time to pick up my phone when Celestino calls me thursday morning. We were supposed to meet at the rink to send off the skaters who are competing. But Yuuri hasn’t moved from bed. The sheets are stained with blood, some of it old and rusty, and some of it still bright red. Yuuri whimpered the whole time Viktor searched him for injury, finding none.  
It all streamed from his nostrils, his mouth smeared and gorey.

“We have to go to the hospital, Viktor.” I have 911 dialed in my phone, but I’m not brave enough to dial it yet. All because of a stupid few words.  
“It's the wolf in him.” Viktor had said, before I even said a word.

“We can’t. They can’t do anything.” Viktor mutters. He looks almost as bad as Yuuri. His eyes are dark and lifeless, underlined with shadow. 

“You said he didn’t change.” I bite out. “So there’s no wolf in him. Why are you so caught up in that?”

“Because I can smell it all over him.” Viktor watches Yuuri from afar-- even a light touch makes him cry out in pain, and he’s finally fallen back into a light sleep.

I have to do something though. Even if it's proving Viktor wrong.

It takes me fifteen minutes to walk to the clinic. I use my key card to get in, hoping no one will notice it's not my shift when I take three sample vials from the supply closet.

The first is easy enough. I hold it under Yuuri’s nose, collecting the blood that flows from it.

The second won’t be the hardest, but it still takes time.

“Viktor. I need a sample.” I roll Yuuri’s between my hands. He eyes the syringe on the kitchen table warily.

“Why me?”

“Because you’re cured.”

“But Yuuri didn’t change in the first place.” He still fights me even as he rolls up his sleeve.

“So either you have something he doesn’t…” I prep the syringe. “Or you are a ticking time bomb and there is no cure. Just a delay.”

“How will you know?” Viktor doesn’t even flinch when I push the needle into the skin of his forearm.

“I need your help. We need to find a wolf. One like you.” I transfer the contents of the syringe into the vial, writing Viktors name on it in sharpie. Its a bigger sample than I could gather from Yuuri, but I am too scared to punch a hole in him when he is bleeding like a faucet already.

“There aren’t any…” Viktor is lying, but I know he would do anything for Yuuri. “Here. We’d have to back to Liam, or talk to the pack in Minnesota.”

“Where’s Liam?” I roll both of the samples between my hands.

“Or… there’s the woods behind the house.”

“What house?”

“Last winter.. Yuuri left food for us in a clearing. I was the only come who came at first… but Hannah came… I’m sure the whole pack came at one point or the other.”

“Yuuri was FEEDING you?” I let my anger get the worst of me. I knew Yuuri was stubborn, but stupid too? Not only was he making the wolves depend on him, he was luring the very animals that nearly killed him closer to him.

“Do you really want to be mad at him now?” Viktor bites back at me. He’s right. I don’t. Yuuri lived through it, and now he’s dying.

“Then… then we need meat.. And benadryl. Lots of it.” There’s a high probability of me losing an arm, but I don’t care I’d fight a hundred wolves for Yuuri.

Viktor stays behind, keeping watch over Yuuri. I break out the credit card from my parents and probably put myself on a watch list at the grocery store with the amount of drugs in my cart. But the cashier is a fellow college age student, and so full of ennui that I leave without so much as a look.

Rather than hope that the wolves will take the right bite, I end up crushing the pills into a powder, rolling the meat in it. It’s a better cut than Yuuri and I would ever splurge on, but I need them to be interested. Viktor leads me to the clearing only after we set up a facetime call with Yuuri in the frame. I scatter the clearing with meat, hiding it in the spot Viktor points out, as well as a few between the trees.

We wait.

Yuuri snores on the other line, drooling a bit, the red leaking through the tissues stuffed into his nose. He would look peaceful, but his face is scrunched up in pain.


	12. Yuuri

Yuuri  
100.4 F 38 C Internal  
The pain I’ve been trying to ignore all week only grows. Every join in my body is on fire. I feel like I’ve been scraped from the inside out, until I’m left hollow. I can feel my skin grow sticky with sweat, but I can’t stand to do anything about it. I close my eyes, because moving them hurts. I feel like my head it going to swell until it splits, and sleep is the only thing stopping me from dying.

I can feel Viktor and Phichit being careful around me. They wrap me up in blankets, but its not my skin that hurts. It’s the bones and sinew inside of me. It doesn’t feel right-- everything is wrong.


	13. Phichit and the hunter

Phichit  
45F 7C  
At the first sign of Yuuri waking up, Viktor leaves me, taking my phone with him. I sit on the other side of the block, just in case the presence of a human scares them away.

Another hour, and I hear the hum of a hideous SUV roll behind me. Celestino talks with Viktor,   
doors slamming. The engine keeps running, and I can see by the dim interior lights that Yuuri is curled up in the front seat.

 

“Viktor, what are you doing?” I hiss, stomping over the frozen ground.

“Benadryl won’t take out a wolf, Phichit. This will.” Celestino hefts up a gun from the backseat. 

“Oh my god, we can’t just kill them!” I bite out.

“Celestino’s a hunter. He has access to a lot more than we do.” Viktor says solemnly, watching Yuuri, although all we can see is his head of curly dark hair.

“It’s a stun gun, Phichit. I only hunt venison, but I have friends. The use this incase an animal escapes from the Detroit zoo.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. My life has been out of control, and this takes the cake.

“Does this mean you believe us?” I venture to ask. Celestino only nods, crossing the street to a clearing. Viktor hangs by the SUV, watching Yuuri sleep in a bundle of blankets, the heater on the top setting.  
I follow after Celestino, his nod not enough.

“What about the other skaters?”

“Avril took my place. I wanted to be sure I had time to talk to Yuuri before he really decided to quit. He’s too good to lose, you know.” Celestino keeps his voice low.

“So… you stayed behind… and stole a stun gun from a zoo for him?”

Celestino shrugs. “I brought blankets. I know my students. It will be too cold to stay still like that, Phichit.”

Ciao Ciao can be just as frustrating as Yuuri sometimes. I stalk off, going between the drugged meat and the car, trying to check on Yuuri.

It’s another four hours before a shadow creeps out from the woods. Celestino is hidden among the leaves, watching as the wolf creeps up to the offering of meat.

Snap.

The wolf crumples.

Viktor cries out.


	14. The Cure

Viktor  
45F 7C  
I haven’t seen that wolf in a year, but I could never forget it.

The coat is the same color I watched my best friend crumple into. It's the same body that wrecked the hotel room we shared before we both made international news.

Its the wolf that Christophe disappeared into, and never returned from. He is my ghost, the life I stole by sinking my teeth into him. It’s another life I ruined.

Phichit  
45F 7C  
We inadvertently abandon Yuuri. I rush forward to get my blood sample. Celestino runs to keep guard. Viktor rushes forward, collapsing onto the frozen ground and pulling the wolf close.

 

“We have to keep him. Please.” Viktors voice is raw. The wolf stinks, and it takes me a few times to find a vein. I’m going to medical school, not veterinary, for fucks sake.

“Why?” I bite out. We don’t have time to waste. We were lucky enough to get a wolf so soon. 

“It’s Chris. Giacometti.” Viktor is pale, looking like death himself. 

Celestino doesn’t question it. It takes two adults to lift the wolf into the trunk of the SUV.

Yuuri still sleeps.

I jump out at the clinic. It’s after hours, but I don’t care. My degree doesn’t matter if I can’t save my best friend.

I smear each of the samples onto a glass slide. Celestino carries Yuuri into the building with me, leaving Viktor behind with the sleeping wolf.

Celestino gets Yuuri a cup of the water from the bubbler, holding the paper cup up to his lips.

It’s bad.

I know what to look for in the first two samples. It’s blood. But there’s something else. I have to shuffle through all three samples before I figure it out.

Whatever it is, the ghost between the cells… Viktor and the wolf has it. And Yuuri does not.

The wolf blood is teeming with it. Viktor has it mixed in his blood to a lesser degree, but I can’t find any of it in Yuuri’s blood. 

I was wrong.

The wolf isn’t the disease. It’s the cure.

It’s keeping the blood from apoptosis… the blood cell in Viktors sample are whole. The microscope in the clinic isn’t strong enough to see what's really happening, but the blood cells are a mess and markedly different from the slides I’ve studied before.

 

Whatever is happening to Yuuri, isn’t happening to Viktor or the wolf.

Yuuri needs to change.

I sweep the first two samples into the biohazard bin. The wolf blood stays with me, just in case.

“Phichit. We aren’t going back to the apartment.” Celestino's voice is solemn.

Yuuri’s eyes are open. They are stained red, the blood collecting like tears at his eyelashes. His eyes are glassy and unfocused. I pull Yuuri’s lips back. His gums are bleeding too. His lips are colder than they should be.

We should’ve gone to the hospital hours ago.

Yuuri whimpers when Celestino carries him back outside. I hand Viktor the epipens I took from the closet. Inventory will happen in a few days, and the head of the clinic is going to be pissed.

“We have to go the hospital.” I tell Viktor, leaving no room for arguing. Yuuri cries out when he try to fold him into the front seat. We buckle him in, but he barely has the energy to sit up, and he sinks low in the seat.


	15. Viktor

Viktor  
44F 7C  
My worst nightmares have come back to haunt me.

I know the medicine won’t last longer. I sink the epipen into the fur of the wolf. I hope that it will work in the reverse, turning him into a human like it did me into a wolf.

It takes a second injection before the wolf starts to shake and tremble with the intimately familiar change.

I close my eyes tight, just because I can never bear to watch. The shame rises in me.

This is all my fault.

I should have never gone back to say my goodbye that day.

I should have never interfered with Yuuri.

I ruined both their lives. I had it stolen from them, and innocent party.

I was the only one who chose this.

 

Christophe lays twisted in the grey carpeting of the car trunk. His green eyes and thick eyelashes are empty, before the humanity returns to them. His fingers stay curled into his palm. His curls have grown out, the dark undercut grown out into golden curls.

“Viktor?” He breathes out a question. 

“I’m sorry,” I sob. “I’m so, so sorry.”

He’s already starting to shake with the threat of change. His stomach jerks, and his confusion only grows.

My cure is on thin ice, but I can’t deny him a chance.

“Chris… If you had the chance, would you risk life to be human again?” I choke out. His nails are sharp, his skin fighting this form.

“Of course, mon ami,” His voice is wondrously unchanged from the years I’ve missed him.

It disappeared as quickly as it came.


	16. Phichit- Palliative

Phichit  
44F 7C

“Pop the trunk!” I shout at Celestino. There’s a scramble in the backseat, the wolf awake and fighting the strange surroundings. Celestino pulls to the side of the road, unlatching the back. It springs open, and the wolf thrashes out of the small opening before Viktor can push it open.

“Are we done?” Celestino barks. The hospital is a block away. Crimson tear tracks stain Yuuri's cheeks. His eyes are still glazed, and he barely shows any signs of reacting to the commotion inside the car. I can only tell he’s alive because of his labored breathing

Viktor scoops Yuuri up into his arms when we pull into the emergency room bay. Yuuri is limp as a ragdoll, his hands tucked against his chest and head lolling into Viktor’s shoulder. The triage nurse doesn’t even hand up paperwork-- she waves us in. There's a bed in the hallway, and Viktor lays Yuuri down on it. He whimpers, curling into himself. His arm hangs limply when a doctor takes his vital signs. I only catch a few numbers, but I already know they are too low.

“Do we have a medical history?” A nurse asks. They immediately put him on   
oxygen, a full mouth mask when the nasal cannula they started with filled with blood.

“U--um.. He’s blood type A.” I remember when he volunteered for my lab. “He takes Venlafaxine, uh, daily… But that’s it.”

“What’s your name darling?” Another nurse smooths Yuuri’s damp hair back. His temperature reads higher than it has in month.

“Katsuki… Yuuri..” Yuuri’s voice is so soft, it's barely perceptible. He murmurs something in Japanese, but it's lost on all of us. A nurse taps it into the computer, and in a few minutes he is labeled and stripped of his clothing.

A bigger team of nurses arrive. We’re pushed into the waiting room, leaving at the same time when an orderly comes in with two bags of blood.

Viktor sinks into one of the hard plastic chairs. Tears are streaming down his cheeks, but he doesn't make a sound. I sit next to him, setting an awkward hand on his knee.

Celestino spends the time at the counter, handing over his credit card and pulling out a file from the box he always keeps in his car.

“Phichit!” Celestino calls from the counter. I walk closer. The only other people in the waiting room are college students with the flu and a mom with a crying baby.

“Can you call Yuuri’s parents for me?” Celestino hands me a stack of papers, neatly typed and stapled at the corner.

“Uh, okay.” This isn’t exactly what I signed up for. I don’t even know how much English Yuuri’s family knows, and the only Japanese I know is too dirty and stupid to be useful.

Luckily Celestino knows me well (He’s paid to) and both mine and Yuuri’s phones are plugged into the wall with the chargers Celestino brought with him. I tap the number into my screen, copying it from the emergency contact field with a shaking hand.

It rings once. Twice. I don’t even know what time it is in Japan.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line is wide awake. There's commotion, dishes clinking behind them. Lunch time? I don’t even know what time it is now.

“Hey… uh… This is Phichit Chulanont… I’m Yuuri’s best friend… in Detroit.” My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

“Where is he?” The voice is young, and flat. She doesn’t sound that polite. But from what I remember, Yuuri said his sister was kind of a punk.

“We’re in the hospital.” A sob escapes from Viktor across the room. I play with the charging cord like I’m in some early 90s movie. “We...we don’t really know whats wrong.”

“Oh.” The woman on the other end says. There’s silence between us. “Should...should we book tickets?”

I stare at Viktor. I don’t think he would allow me to try out my idea. I don’t even know if I can try my idea, now that we’re in a hospital. We’re surrounded by nurses and doctors, a constant flow of people. My best bet it to wait until Yuuri is stabilized--- hope that he is-- and somehow infect him with the sample in my hoodie pocket.

“N...no. It's not that bad.” I lie through my teeth. But by the time they fly to the states, Yuuri won’t be here. Besides, I know they can’t afford to shut down their business for anything less than last rites.

“O… okay. I'll tell my parents. We’ll pray for him.”

Mari doesn’t even ask to talk to him. I hang up feeling empty, staring at my lock screen. I flip through my phone, until I find a picture we took over the summer. Yuuri is leaning on my shoulders, Viktor tucked against him. We all look happy and carefree, the bright background of the boba cafe barely visible behind us.

I set it as my new lock screen as a good luck charm.

Celestino, Yuuri’s de-facto next of kin, brings me back with him when he is invited back to Yuuri’s room.

It’s full of machinery. He has a PICC line in his arm, gauze taped over the needle. I can tell he’s on an IV rehydration drip, along with a blood transfusion. A big block machine is pumping water into a cooling blanket laid across his chest like a vest and on his legs. There’s other bags draining into him that I can’t recognise, but at least one of them has to be pain medicine. He’s dozing peacefully, his nostrils dark with coagulated blood. His glasses and a gold ring sit in a plastic bag on the bedside table.

“He’s going to be transferred to the ICU.” Celestino reports to me, patting me on the back and resting his hand there. He’s trying to be comforting, but it doesn’t work.

We’re on the first floor now. I don’t even know where the ICU is, but there are least nine floors above us. I have less time than I thought. Or more. I have no idea what the hospital can offer, whether he really is healing or its just palliative care.


	17. Viktor-  Dissapear

Viktor  
44F 7C  
Phichit hands me Yuuri’s ring. “I thought you might want to hold onto this.”

He means well, but I feel gutted. I pull it out of the stiff plastic bag and slide it onto my finger, matching it with my ring. 

“How is he?” My voice is rough and breaks easily. I don’t want to talk-- I want to scream. I want to disappear.

I remember intimately why I chose to be a wolf in the first place.

The world is cruel, and I don’t want to be in it.

“You can come see him, if you want.” Phichit plays with the bag that holds Yuuri’s glasses. “He’s sedated though.”

It doesn’t matter. I just need to see him breathing. I should have called Celestino earlier.

I follow Phichit behind the automatic doors and down the hall. Yuuri looks so small, surrounded by whirring and beeping machinery. The bridge of his nose is bruised just from the weight of his glasses, and his fingertips are dark with blood.

I’m scared to touch him. Bags of blood are feeding into him, and he is no longer bleeding freely, but I am scared I will break him.

Right now he should be landing in Nagoya. Getting ready for opening ceremonies for his first grand prix event of the season.   
Instead, his life is draining away. I stole another life. Chris’ was not enough weight on my soul. Now I have to lose Yuuri too.

“Moya zolotse..” I whisper to Yuuri. I give myself more than I deserve and pres a kiss to his forehead. Yuuri’s eyes drift open. He belongs to a horror movie-- the whites of his eyes a bright crimson red, his eyelids swollen and heavy. But he smiles, and my heart skips a beat.

“Yuuri!” Phichit steps forward. Yuuri’s eyes barely open halfway, and his mouth is dry and thick. He only slides his head to the side, his eyes tracking to Phichit.

“Yuuri, oh man. Um.” Phichit stammers, before he pulls a vial out of his pocket. “How are you feeling?”

“What is that?” I sound angry, but I don’t have any control of myself anymore. The beeping picks up on Yuuri’s monitors, and the solid weight of guilt inside my chest grows.

“The wolf blood.” Phichit shakes the vial. “It will only be good for another twenty minutes or so.. But the toxin-- or whatever it is-- it should be enough.”

“Enough for what?” My heart stops beating. 

“To change Yuuri.” Phichit looks directly at me.

“When I went to the clinic…. I realized I was wrong. The fever wasn’t the cure. The wolf is.” Phichits breath is shaky. “Viktor… you have another ten months.. Maybe eleven. Yuuri… he’s out of time.” His dark eyes drift to Yuuri. He looks too frail to be conscious. But he lifts his arm, offering the port taped to his arm. 

“We can’t just inject animal blood, Yuuri.” Phichit half-laughs. “I mean, the vector is a bite.”

“I’m not biting him. He’ll bleed out.” I growl. “It won’t work. I won’t risk it.”

“We can’t just let him die, Viktor.” Phichit grimaces. “Besides… I don’t want him to fight an infection on top of this.”

“Then we wait until he’s better.” I seethe.

“You can’t look at him and tell me you think it's just a fever, Viktor.” Phichits tone is deadly. “You can smell the wolf on him. “

He’s right. I can smell it without touching him. I can see his joints shake and shiver with the change.

“Yuuri,” Phichit looks down at him, his arm cradled in his hand. “I can try this, right?”

“Please,” Yuuri croaks, his voice barely a whisper.

My vision blurs with tears. Phichit unwraps and runs a scalpel down Yuuri’s arm. Blood wells up instantly, blotted away by paper towels stolen from the washing station. He soaks one with the vial of blood, pressing it to Yuuri’s arm.

Phichit has me hold it, as he slowly disconnects Yuuri from his IVs and monitors. He leaves the alert-enabled ones for last.

I get to hold Yuuri for sixty seconds before he starts to tremble.  
His stomach retches. He curls into a ball, his limbs shaking. Blood runs from his arm and drops onto the sheets. Phichit holds a garbage can to his mouth, as Yuuri spits up bile. HIs muscles snap and stretch, his bones moving underneath his skin.

I never wanted him to have to go through this.

He whimpers through sharpened teeth, his fingers curling inward and darkening. I close my eyes, holding him close as his skin softens into silky fur. 

He’s beautiful.

A dark, glossy black wolf. His brown eyes are just as soft and caring as they are in his human face. Even with the red whites. I can tell he’s tired, even with the superhuman healing that comes with the change into this form. I never woke up with bleeding wounds, only scars and rough skin.

He thrashes out of the hospital gown, claws tapping on the linoleum floor.

He’s scared. He’s terrified, hackles raised and body small, cowering in a corner.

We can’t be found here. There’s no explanation. I look around the room-- there’s one chair, and one way out that doesn’t include people. I throw the chair through the window. The glass shatters, a gust of winter air blowing in immediately. There’s no points for subtlety, but Yuuri bolts for the opening easily. 

He disappears into the night, and my heart goes with him.


	18. PHichit- Lost to Nature

Phichit  
45F 7C  
They question us. But because Yuuri wasn’t on any paralytic, and there’s no bloody trail outside. They have nothing to hold against us. Celestino looks like he has a headache when he sees the shattered window and empty hospital bed.

But maybe, just maybe, he will believe us now.

By the time the police leave, the run is rising. They take Yuuri’s phone with them, and start organizing a search party. Viktor and I both know they won’t find him until spring. For now, they think he’s a delirious and fevered health risk. The chief officer acts so casually I bet he thinks Yuuri is dead from exposure. 

Yuuri is alive, and that's all that matters.

I don’t know why anyone would choose that willingly like Viktor supposedly did. I felt sick to my stomach watching Yuuri change, watching the bones move unnaturally underneath his skin. I couldn’t watch the whole thing, but I know, without a doubt, that he is out there, wearing a black pelt of fur  
Viktor collapses into Yuuri’s bed without a single word between us. Celestino hovers after driving us home and following us up the stairs. But he leaves after I settle on the couch, staring blankly at the wall, trying to process all of this.

I should have saved some of the blood for Viktor. Hidden it. But the paper towels fluttered from the floor, the entire sample gone to Yuuri. We weren’t let back into the room once the security officers ran into the room. But then I would be completely alone now, and I don’t think I could handle that.

I miraculously escape punishment. The head of the clinic notices the missing supplies, and the entire staff gets lectured. My entire program shares the same key card code, and has for years. There’s no way to punish anyone without violating ethics and admitting to breaking a few laws.

 

Yuuri’s mug still sits in the sink. His sneakers sit by the door. It feels like he’s a ghost. I almost expect him to come through the door, carrying a bag of fast food or his backpack full of papers.

Will he even graduate now? We have a good two months until its warm enough to worry about explaining his return. But the rest of his life is changed forever. 

I lost my best friend to the woods. Celestino’s side hobby ended up saving him, but it brings up another worry to me. What if he gets hunted? Yuuri is out there, alone. I can’t call him and check in on him either. He’s lost to nature.

Viktor makes awful company. He doesn’t get out of bed for eighteen hours. The first few days he picks at the toast and coffee I leave by the bed and ventures to the bathroom, but that’s it. 

By the fifth day, I’m sick of it.

“Listen up, douchebag. Yuuri’s going to be pissed at me if you’re dead when it hits fifty degrees. Get out of bed.” Viktor lifts his head, but his eyes are dull and lifeless.

“Get out! We can’t go outside like this. You’ll scare him away stinking like that.” I toss the package, freshly arrived from amazon at him.

It’s a tracking collar. It’s meant for runaway dogs, app-enabled, and it's the most expensive model on the internet. He turns the box over in his hand, frowning as he reads and translates the english. 

An hour later, and we’re hiking through the woods at the edge of the campus. I’ve been scouring police reports for the past week, but there's been no calls for animal control. I can only hope Yuuri remembered the woods from his time feeding Viktor over the winter.

I watched a few youtube videos, but the internet doesn’t make me a tracking expert. The ground is uneven, and any animals that live in the forest are scared away by our footprints. The first day is a bust.

But the next morning, Viktor gets up and gets dressed. He’s gone until sunset, the collar looped around his wrist when he comes back. He repeats it the next morning, and the one after that. I skip class to go with him the day after that. 

“What about the clearing?” I ask, as we climb over the creek that we’ve stumbled over between the trees. It's the only place I know Yuuri visited, and if his homebody tendencies managed to stay with him, thats where he would go.

Most of the meat we left to lure a cure is gone. What is left is rotting, half-frozen in the snow. Viktor sinks onto his knees in the middle of the clearing. He waits, absolutely still, closing his eyes as snowflakes cling to his hair and his eyelashes.

One of the shadows moves, creeping along the edges of the clearing cautiously.

Frosted with snow, he looks wild and stunning. It’s weird, seeing a wolf and instantly thinking that's my Yuuri. But I do.

He creeps up to Viktor slowly. He jumps back when I make any movement, skittish as all get out. But Viktor doesn’t move, his eyes closed, his pale skin and hair nearly blending into the snow. He waits until Yuuri’s head butts against his chest. He gasps, something between a sob and a laugh, hugging Yuuri close. He shrinks back, and Viktor leans forward desperately. He manages to slip the collar around his neck before Yuuri shrinks back into the trees. Viktor falls face-first into the snow, and he barely lifts himself out of it, looking up to stare after Yuuri.


	19. Viktor

Viktor  
31F -1 C

I sign up for a year contract cell phone in order to track Yuuri. The app is great-- the only one on my phone for now. I can watch Yuuri move though unmarked greenery of the digital map. He moves in circles in the woods that border this college town. It makes me days a little more bearable--- if he stops moving, I will know right away.

With Yuuri’s disappearance so close to the competition , he is all over the news. My story is dragged up with his. Old pictures play on national news. I know I was that person, but they feel like a stranger to me now. 

It’s not a coincidence, really. How our stories fit together. But America loves drama, and they latch onto conspiracy theories. ISU officials have to release a statement about the safety of Skate America. Celestino even gets interviewed, and only I notice the wall he’s put up. He talks about how he deeply misses his hard-working student, and hopes that the mystery is solved. Phichit still goes to practice, but the rink is emptier. The younger members of Detroit’s skate club stay home.

I’ve already gone long, so instead I cut my hair short. The barber leaves it slightly longer on top, but it still leaves my head feeling light and naked. I’d rather not, but I can’t leave Detroit, and my Yuuri. If national news latched onto the story, the local news thrives on it. My face is plastered on every evening program.

Thankfully, Liam sent my fake passport along with my bank card this summer. I can live under my assumed name-- Nikolai Feltsman. I have to-- Yuuri’s sponsorships are gone, and I am slowly losing my mind within the four walls of the apartment.

I apply to any and every job that will cover Yuuri’s part of the rent. I check the tracking app while I wait for the interviews. Viktor Nikiforov has never worked a job outside of summer skating camps. Nikolai Feltsman, however, worked in the school library at the university I graduated from. Nikolai’s mother is American, just to avoid the mess of paperwork and visas I don’t have.

Yuuri’s college library calls me back first, and I accept the job immediately. 

No one suspects me when I start tutoring students in Russian. The library can be lonely, but it forces me to wake up in the morning and go through the motions.

 

Life gets easier. Until it’s the end of November.


	20. Phichit- Birthday

Phichit  
20F -7C  
“I need to know where Yuuri is.” I stand over Viktor’s bed-- Yuuri’s bed, really. He’s still asleep on his only day off.

“Wake up.” I push his shoulder, suddenly feeling bitter. “It’s Yuuri’s birthday, you dick weed.” 

Yuuri’s mug is still on the counter. I washed it, but I can’t bear to put it away just yet. It still looks like he can walk in the door any minute now. But he doesn’t. I have to convince myself that he’s not a ghost. That I didn’t mess up again, and sign a death sentence. 

Viktor wakes up, but he looks sad. I’m sick of it. He’s not the only one who misses Yuuri. Celestino’s lost a few students, and I’ve already gone through a set of midterms without Yuuri’s quiet cheerleading.

“I don’t think he understands the concept of a birthday right now.” Viktor says flatly.

“So? We do.” I snap. “We…. we can make him a meat cake or something. Make sure he’s okay.”

I want to see him, even though I know he doesn’t want to see us. I’ve stalked the little clearing, leaving food there, but he never goes to it. He avoids human civilization entirely, sticking to the parts of the woods that don’t touch human roads. Viktor says that being a wolf is different, that his human brain isn’t in charge. But part of it is. Yuuri’s anxiety is showing through. I try not to be hurt, because it’s not really surprising. Yuuri has always liked small groups and avoiding people. He’s an introvert. Being a wolf magnified that, I guess.

It turns out that meat cake isn’t a thing, and meat pie involves a lot of spices and cooking. Google has failed me. 

I call Celestino while Viktor gets dressed. He’ll drive us by a butcher, as well as to wherever Yuuri is. My parents haven’t asked about the hundreds of dollars I’ve put on the emergency card, so I don’t worry about the kobe beef steak I charge on it. Celestino adds on a rack of venison, which I find out is the name for deer meat.

We have to hike half a mile until we get close to where Yuuri is reported to be. He’s nowhere in sight, but I’ve given up hope on spending quality time with him.

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you,” I sing out, throwing the steak onto the forest floor. “Happy birthday my Yuuri, happy birthday to you!”

I kick at a squirrel that scampers over to check the steak out. Viktor is quiet, standing a few feet behind me. Celestino stands behind him, watching.

“You guys suck at parties.” I bite out, blinking back tears. Last year, Yuuri was fine. He hadn't become a meal for wild animals yet. We went to the Cheesecake Factory together, breaking our diets before training for nationals robbed us of all delicious food. He wore the stupid tinsel birthday crown I bought him at the party store the whole day. He wore the hamster hoodie I got him to practice, even though he looked embarrassed when Ciao Ciao complimented him on it.

Now, I can’t even talk to him.


	21. Viktor, Robbed

**Viktor**

**20F -7 C**

Celestino stops me after he drops us back at the apartment. I’m almost into my thirties, but when he talks to me I feel like a child.

 

“Viktor. Here.” He holds out a faux leather-bound book. It’s dark brown, a silk ribbon bookmark tucked into the cream colored pages. “Since you can’t talk to Yuuri.” 

 

Celestino, despite his chiseled features, is a very soft man.

 

“Excuse me?” I take the book and flip through the pages. They’re blank.

 

“Write down everything you want to say to him. He can read it later.”  The man is smiling, but there's something hidden behind his eyes. “I learned it from a grief counselor.” He adds, and it makes sense.

 

I bow my head in thanks and tuck it into my coat.  I want to throw it away at first. Yuuri isn’t dead. He’s just… temporarily unreachable. His human brain is offline, in stasis until the spring sun thaws it out.

 

But, for some stupid reason, I bring it with me to work. It lives in a corner of my desk. It’s empty, except for a dollar-store frame with a school-printer-paper photo  of Yuuri, courtesy of Phichit. It sits next to my ‘Worlds Best Dad’ mug, borrowed from the cabinet back home. After the pre-finals rush, the library slows. There's few books to shelve and even fewer people to assist in research.

 

One day it snows, and the library is empty. I go to work, just because school isn’t closed, and the five minute walk can’t stop me. I clear out my email inbox, watch the snow fall, before I open the book.

 

_ Dear Yuuri _

 

I write. It feels wrong. I never wrote love letters before. Yuuri always complained about his professors awful handwriting. The memory makes me smile.

 

_ My birthday is next week.  _

 

_ I was hoping to spend it with you. I think I will. There will be a few meters of snow by then. But what am I, if not used to cold? _

 

_ Television networks are still asking for interviews from Phichit.  He took your place in the Grand Prix lineup. He placed bronze at Skate Canada.  _

 

_ I think he would have done Gold… but they played a memorial for you. He must have lost PCS for looking so angry. He wanted to do your skate for the exhibition, but I asked him not to. _

 

_ Everyone’s wondering where you are. _

 

_ I know where you are, but I wish you were closer. I wish I could  talk to you and have you understand. I just even want to hold you and have you not be scared. _

 

_ I’m sorry I did this to you. _

 

I stop writing when I start smearing the ink with tears. I wipe them away, flipping through the only other app I’ve bothered to download.

 

Yuri posted another photo  of Makkachin. She’s chewing on a toy that looks like a giant piece of toast. Yura won Gold  at his last competition, and his cocky grin still hasn’t melted away. I wish I could congratulate him, but I risk exposing myself and Yuuri if I log into my old account. Without it, I’m just a faceless fan.

 

I thought I had chosen the safest way out. No body to find, no blame to lay.  I would dissapear spend most of my life in another mind. I didn’t have to abandon my family. I could check in on them.  Being a wolf wasn’t permanent death. I could give them reassurances, right?

 

I was wrong.  My selfless bow out of the stage stole the lives of my two most precious people.

 

Chris still crept out in the woods. Had  he met Yuuri? Did he care for him, invite him to the pack without me there to guide him to it? Did they feel the connection, born from the selfish soul who dragged them into that life?

 

Chris had changed the same week I had.  The first few weeks of being a werewolf is volatile. You fall in and out of the form.  I thought I was solidly in my skin when I went back to the hotel room. Liam hadn’t told me how painful it was, and I was a coward. I tried to get comfort from Chris, and instead, I killed him.  I woke up among broken glass, my human mind fitting back into place, bloody footprints on the tan hotel carpet. Chris had cowered in the corner. I waited for him to change back.

 

But he didn’t.

 

I stayed in Liam’s home the entire summer, watching and waiting for him to come back.

 

But he didn’t.

 

Now I was waiting for Yuuri, and it was winter.  My punishment was to wait, no longer free of but robbed of my wolf skin.


	22. Viktor- letters

**Viktor**

**18F -7C**

 

_ Yuuri _

 

_ I waited for you in the woods. I brought dinner to share, but you were too scared. I thought I saw you among the trees, but it was hard to tell. _

 

_ Phichit made me birthday brownies, but they weren’t as sweet as you.  _

 

_ Everything is closed for Christmas. _

 

_ Why didn’t you tell me Christmas was date night in Japan? _

 

_ We should move there. It’d be my favorite way to celebrate. _

  
  
  
  


_ Yuuri _

 

_ In the US, they kiss at midnight on New Years.  _

 

_ My coworkers invited me to a party.  Quite a few of them are already married. _

 

_ It made me think of our wedding.  I looked at Hasetsu. I want to go there in the spring with you. The cherry  blossoms make it look like heaven. _

  
  


_ Yuuri _

 

_ I have a box of chocolates for you when you return. Valentines is all over this country. I spent some time researching it at work, and it’s not romantic at all. It’s a commemoration of two men executed, both named Valentine. _

 

_ Now that I think about it, I like the new meaning better. _

 

_ I found roses, but they’ll wilt before you’re back. _


	23. Phichit- spring

**Phichit**

**40F  4C**

“Viktor!” I smack him with a pillow again. It’s 40 degrees out. The lower limit of change.   Yuuri isn’t moving as fast on the tracker app as he should. The ground is thawing.

 

Yuuri may be back.

 

I only have to say “Yuuri” before Viktor is up and getting dressed.  We don’t bother with a car-- Yuuri’s only about two miles out from the apartment.

 

My legs and lungs burn from the uneven terrain. We stop frequently to check the dot on the map, but its stopped moving. I push back the ball of nerves that starts to form in my stomach, thinking  of the worst.

 

We find him at the edge of a pond, laying naked and twisted in the mud.

 

“Yuuri!” Viktor cries, but he doesn’t lift his head. His knees are bent into his chest, his fingers curled into his palm. His eyes are empty and wild, and his muscles twitch and slide under his skin when Viktor scoops him up into his arms.

 

His tracking collar is hanging off his neck, and it looks wrong.  Like he’s part of human trafficking-- dirty and skinny and small. He’s lost a lot of his body weight. The winter has been hard on him, his skin covered with pink scars. His knuckles shake and scrape against Viktor. He struggles to escape, still stuck in his wolf brain. His heels scrape the mud, his fingers darkening and shifting into claws. He collapses back into his fur pelt, and Viktor watches it all. The black wolf-- Yuuri-- is dark and scrawny.  His claws carve divots into the mud, and he raises to his feet even as Viktor buries his face into his ruff.


	24. Viktor- in my arms

 

**Viktor**

**40 F 4C**

“Come back,”  I whisper into his neck.  “Please.” I beg him. He doesn’t hear me, his gorgeous  dark eyes far off. His lips are just as soft, but his teeth are sharp behind them.

 

He’s in purgatory, and it is my hell. It’s not warm enough to keep him solidly in his right skin. His body doesn’t understand the difference, and he stays in-between as it tries to find the right puzzle pieces to snap into.

 

He’s frail in my arms, until he grows muscle and claws and fur, and his form has a weight and presence more than human. I can still feel his ribs, and I know he’s hungry.

 

His teeth sinking into me would be a gift. I could change and be with him for these last few weeks.

 

But he doesn’t fight. He sits with me, my arms around him. I bury my nose into his fur. He smells familiar. The scent  that was on his skin during the fevers, and something more that the animal in me clings to.

 

His nose presses into my cheek. It’s the closest we’ve been in months. Ever, in his wolf form.

I lower my head, and his head butts against mine.

 

I laugh-- I wonder if he’s commenting  on my shorn-short hair. Is he expressing his hate for it, or does his soul recognize mine?  Whatever it is, I love it. He nuzzles into me, and I press back, rubbing my nose into his fur. 

 

“I love you,  so much!I love you Yuuri,” I laugh, tangling my hands in his coat and trying to hold on. I get knocked down into the mud, but I don’t care. He’s heavy and warm, despite being starving thin. He flinches when Phichit moves forward, his ears folding back, but he doesn’t run away. I rest my head on top of his front legs, and he rests his chin next to my cheek.

 

My face aches with a smile. His whiskers tickle my cheek. I wish I could hear his voice, but touching him is enough. Feeling him breathe is enough. 

 

Yuuri is in my arms.


	25. Phichit

Phichit  
35F 2 C  
The next few weeks are insufferable. We get an unexpected cold snap. Viktor spends his day off out in the woods, and his time at work checking the weather. He stops being able to focus, and dinners go from communal to whatever can be microwaved in 3 minutes or less.

When I go to print out my essay, one of his coworkers asks me under her breath if Viktor is dating anyone. I almost get really pissed off, until I see how light Viktor is on his feet.

Viktor is happy because he saw Yuuri. Even if Yuuri was a wild animal. He’s a simple man.  
We watch the tracker together when we’re at home, and he texts me every hour with any updates.

I still prefer Yuuri as a roommate, but Viktor isn’t so bad. He takes up half the bathroom with his hair care, and he doesn’t clean the drain as much. But he finds America just as weird as Yuuri does, and he eats just as adventurously. We order congee and chicken feet one night when we stream Japan’s nationals. I recognize a few names from talking to Yuuri, but we really only watch to see what they say about Yuuri.

Japan’s tributes are more respectful than America’s. They don’t show him tripping over his own skates the second he stepped off the ice at Skate America. They highlight his junior years, his rise as Japan’s ace. There’s plenty of shots of him cuddling stuffed poodles and handmade plush food. They don’t angle it like he’s dead, but there's no acknowledgement of him being alive either. It ends with a long shot of him during the Japanese anthem. He looks solemn, and I can remember when he told me that he was terrified.

 

I’ve watched hundreds of these clips, keeping a close eye on the news.

But… it hurts.

The empty space where Yuuri should be stings. It climbs up to the the upper 40s for a week. The ground is growing softer, but the dot on the tracker app follows the same patterns.

It isn’t until March that we watch the dot move closer to the highway. My heart jumps into my throat. Viktor calls out of work, and I call Celestino out of his Juniors session to drive us.


	26. Viktor

Viktor  
47F 8C  
My hands shake as I slip on my trench coat, slipping Yuuri’s glasses into the pocket. Yuuri is moving toward civilization, slowly enough that it's believable that he is on two feet instead of four. He’s close enough that we run up the state route, Phichit doing it with more ease than I do. He is still an athlete. I am just a part-time animal.

This time, I’m not scared of scaring anything away. I call out his name, crush twigs underfoot. I try not to think of the worst when the dot stops moving.

“Yuuri!” I call out again, pushing aside a thicket of blackberry thorns. Before I have the chance to check the app again, I spot the curve of of his spine. He sits on a moss covered hill of dirt, his knees pressed into chest , sobs racking his thin body. I tumble into the clearing, and his face lifts, his eyes wide before he squints. I don’t give him enough time to move from his spot, skinning my knees as I scramble to his spot. 

“Vitya,” Yuuri hiccups. I crush him easily in my arms, kiss him all over his his tear-streaked face. His hands find my face , and he streers my lips to his. His mouth tastes earthy, and our teeth crash together with clumsy abandon. 

“Ow,” Yuuri laughs. His voice is music to my ears. Phichit catches up to me, and Yuuri squints behind me. His noses moves too, like he’s smelling the air, still stuck in his animal brain.

“Yuuri! Wow, you’re naked.” Phichit sounds cheerful. Yuuri curls up a bit in my arms. “We forgot about that part.”

“Hey Phichit.” Yuuri says shyly, though his mouth curves into a smile.   
I pull back from Yuuri only far enough to pull my jacket off. I help Yuuri to his feet so I can wrap it around him. The tan trench coat is longer on Yuuri, and I have to tie the belt smaller so it doesn’t hang off of him. He smiles when I pull his glasses from the pocket and unfold the arms for him. I reach back up to unbuckle the training collar that is hanging loosely around his neck. I can’t bear to see him wear it like this.

I have already decided I like this Yuuri better. It replaces the bloody and bruised Yuuri I last saw. The empty eyed half-man I saw in the mud. Now, his eyes are clear and bright. His hair has grown past his ears and is windswept. His skin is whole and healthy, except for a few fresh scratches from the brambles underfoot.

I try not to think of how thin and light he is.

 

“Okay… well.. Now we have to walk back home.” Phichit frowns. Yuuri winces, his toes curling in the dirt.

“I was trying… but…” He twists his foot to the side, and there's a good size gash in his heel.

I scoop him up into my arms. The flush is back on his cheeks, and I want to kiss it until his skin grows hot.

We hike back halfway before we change positions. He rides on my back ,his arms around my neck and resting on my chest. The sleeves of my coat reach his knuckles. I try to focus on that instead of the shape of his body pressed against mine. His soft skin. 

“It hasn’t changed at all.” Yuuri gasps when we push open the door to the apartment. He slides down my back, walking gingerly on the carpet.   
It’s his apartment, but he doesn’t look quite right. It’s the coat, the mud clinging to his skin. He looks wild, or perhaps homeless.

Too skinny.

“What do you want to eat?” It’s a non-sequitur, but Yuuri needs to put weight back on.

“Umm… Anything, really.” Yuuri smiles. He pulls the blanket off the back of the couch and wraps himself in it. He sinks into the furniture with a happy sigh.

There’s a grilled chicken breast still in the fridge. I cut it up and boil some egg noodles I pull from the cabinet. I don’t want to waste time on sauce, so I melt some of Phichits non dairy cheese over it. (I know he won’t mind. If its for Yuuri.)

Yuuri hunches around the bowl. He empties the bowl in a matter of minutes, the lip of the bowl close to his lips. He eats like a starved animal, his legs folded up on the edge of the couch. 

I join Yuuri on the couch, and Phichit bounces onto Yuuri’s other side, making a sandwich. He leans into Yuuri, hugging him from the side. Yuuri closes his eyes, smiling sweetly. I can’t help myself and kiss him on the cheek. He turns into his kiss, pressing his lips against mine.

“I missed you. Both of you.” He hums, his fork scraping against the empty ceramic bowl. I take it and set it on the coffee table so I can lace my fingers into his. 

“I’m just glad you’re alive.” Phichit puts his whole body weight against Yuuri, and he snuggles into my side in turn.

“I like being alive.” Yuuri mumbles. His hands curl around his stomach, but he doesn’t complain. I mentally flip through all the high-calorie foods that will help him build back the muscle he needs.

 

“You look like you almost didn’t make the winter.” Phichit pinches Yuuri’s leg.

“I don’t think I’m a very good hunter.” Yuuri says quietly. He sounds like he doesn’t want to talk about it. I’d honestly be surprised if he remembers much from his months away from me.

“I think I was. Once I’m back with you, we won’t have to worry as much.” I try to comfort him.

Yuuri stiffens under my touch.

“Yuuri?” I question softly. He pulls away from me, folding up against himself.

“You don’t mean… as a wolf, do you?” The look on his face stings more than the loss of his body against mine.

“Of course I do.” I smile, though its meant to be sharp, not kind. “What else? You think I left you by choice?”

“No,” Yuuri bites back, his soft lips hardening into a frown. “I thought you did it because you had to.”

“I had to save your life, yes. But I didn’t stay human by choice.”

“But you have the cure!” Yuuri’s voice rises and he throws his hands into the air. “I thought you chose to--to be human!”

“I chose to stay with you.” I say calmly. Inexplicably his eyes will with tears, and his bottom lip wobbles.

My dark side crawls up to my lips. “Is that… not what you want?”

A sob rips from Yuuri’s chest.

“Oh honey, you did not.” Phichit whispers from his corner of the couch.

“I-- I want you to live because you want to! Not because of me!” His whole body is shaking. I feel stupid-- idiotic. Being away from Yuuri so long has sharpened my edges, and I hurt him not even an hour into having him in my arms.

“Yuuri-- I’m…” I reach out to him, but his breath is coming out in wheezes.

Phichit shifts until he’s sitting on his knees, only the tips of his fingers on his shoulders.

Yuuri shrinks away from me.

I’m a monster.


	27. Phichit

Phichit  
70 F 21C inside  
The first time Yuuri had a panic attack, I thought he was dying.

Celestino had signed us up for a local competition a few weeks after I had moved in with Yuuri. We were still new to each other, and Yuuri was still jet-lagged.

I went to get Celestino after Yuuri threw up in the bathroom, but he didn’t end up doing anything.

Yuuri ended up dropping out and sleeping the entire two hour ride home later that evening. Celestino recommended he see a therapist, and a few months later Yuuri started taking medication for it after getting it approved by the ISU.

Now, I don’t blame him. Yuuri used to battle with the commitment of what flavor of bubble tea to break our diet plan with. Victor just dropped the pressure bomb of the lifetime of almost dying just for him.

Viktor thinks it's romantic. Yuuri thinks he isn’t good enough for that kind of gesture.

Really, both of them are wrong. In more than one way.

Viktor’s cure isn’t a cure.

Viktor’s clock is ticking, his time washing away.

But hey, screw me for wanting my friends to be happy for a day, right?

“He doesn’t like being touched.” I clear my throat when Viktor tries to crush Yuuri to his chest. It sounds like Yuuri can’t get enough air, and I can see his heart beating rapidly through his neck.

“Just… go in the bathroom and get his meds. The Pro---Por pana something...They still should be good.” Viktor rises to his feet like a robot. He comes back with a small orange pill and a glass of water. Yuuri takes it, but his hands are shaking too much and he spills half the glass on Viktor’s trench coat. I put my hand around his and help steady it as he tips the glass to his mouth.

“I want to live for more than you, Yuuri. I promise. I have a job at the library…. I’ve sent letters to Yakov.”

I wrap Yuuri up in another blanket. I hand Yuuri my phone-- his is still sitting in an evidence drawer in some police station in Detroit. I open WhatsApp and open my chat window with Viktor. It’s mainly dinner plans, and reminders for what he needs to buy and when to pay rent. Yuuri’s hands shake, but he types out a message. Viktor’s phone lights up.

“Oh Yuuri… you do enough, I promise. I love you.” Viktor feels close to tears himself.  
I feel a little like a dick. I should be telling Viktor more about how to take care of Yuuri when he gets like this… but part of me makes me want him to have to learn the hard way. 

“I didn’t mean it like that, I swear. I don’t want to break up. I… I’ve been thinking about our wedding, for God’s sake.”

Yuuri’s eyelids are puffy, and he keeps his gaze low enough that he almost look like he’s asleep.

“I’m going to take a bath.” Yuuri murmurs, pulling himself to his feet dragging the pile of blankets with him, one of them trailing behind him like a dinosaur tail.


	28. Yuuri

**Yuuri**

**70F 21C Inside**

My face feels raw and puffy, my brain  pushing against my skull. My body always feels heavy after the adrenaline is gone. The doctor calls them panic attacks, but it’s really more of an assault.

 

I fully intend to scrub myself clean, but by the time I crawl into the hot water, I just want to sleep.  My legs sting where thorns cut at my skin, and the water is hot enough that my skin is turning red. But it’s nice. It’s the warmest I’ve been in ages, and the first time in forever since I needed a hot bath instead of a cool one.

 

It makes me miss home.  I was supposed to go back for New Years, but that obviously didn’t happen.  I want to call my parents, but I can’t. Not until I can come up with a story about why I’m not dead.

 

And an explanation for why I’ll keep disappearing.

 

It’s not fair.  I thought I had dealt with that issue--- that I only had to come up with a lie about how I met Viktor. But  I got sick and ruined everything.

  
  
  


I didn’t even realize I fell asleep until Viktor wakes me up with a light touch to my shoulder.  

 

I feel a little guilty  when I jolt awake and he sinks back, stricken.

  
  


“Can… Can I wash your hair for your?” He twists his hands in front of him.

 

“I’m not a baby. I’m twenty-three.” I mutter. The water is getting colder though, and I’m not any cleaner.

 

“Twenty-four. And...I know. I just want to be with you.” Viktor’s smile is fragile. I nod, biting my bottom lip and feeling myself flush despite myself.

 

He uses his hands to cup water to pour over my head.  His touch is light when he massages his shampoo into my scalp. It feels really good, and smells even better. I forgot how much I missed it. Heat sparks and pools in my stomach, but Viktor doesn’t say anything. He rinses my hair, and he wraps me in a towel when I clumsily climb from the water.

 

“You’re so frail.” He whispers, drying my hair before rubbing the towel over my shoulders.  I look down at my body, trying to see what he does. 

 

There’s the scars from the wolves last winter.  I still have the stretch marks from when I put on ten pounds when I first moved to the states and dealt with my anxiety by eating.

 

I guess you can see my ribs, and my stomach sinks in instead of out. But it happened without me noticing it, so it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.

 

I’m starting to feel human again. Not--- not in the real way, but in the normal way. Like I have brushed hair and decent clothes on, and not the I have fingers way.  Viktor lingers while I brush my teeth. My jeans are a little loose, but it will only take me a week of eating off my diet plan anyway.

I stick a bandaid onto my heel before I limp back into the living room.

“I missed the Final.” I say it out loud without realizing it.

 

“And Nationals. And Europeans. And Four Continents.” Phichit says from the kitchen. There’s a birthday cake on the table-- loaded with twenty four candles as well as the big wax candles shaped like the numbers.  “You kind of fired Celestino.”

 

“Oh.” I forgot about that. I remember why… it had to do with Viktor, and the scolding. I didn’t want to work with someone who talked to me like that. But now I feel… guilty.

 

“We can try skating over the summer…” Viktor follows me into the living room.

 

“But… you  couldn’t skate last summer…” I sink down into a chair at the kitchen table.  

I can’t skate anymore.   Why am I even here?

 

Viktor’s false cheer grates at me. He knows exactly what this means. I can’t skate-- not on four legs. 

 

“I can skate now.” He says, though his expression dims a little with realization

“Can we save this for later? This cake isn’t going to eat itself.” Phichit sounds impatient.

 

“I just… will have a little.” My hunger is gone, I feel more sick than starving.

 

“Thanks, Viktor. Look,Yuuri. I’m working on a cure. A real cure. I promise.” Phichit crosses the kitchen, pushing the cake closer to me. He picks up the lighter off the table and starts lighting the candles.  “I hope you can still eat chocolate.” Phichit hums.

 

“What?” I laugh in disbelief.

 

“You’re part dog, after all.” Phichit drops the lighter on the table when he finished lighting every candle. Half of them are already half-burned and smaller than the other half. “Make a wish.”

 

“You’re not going to sing?” I suck in a deep breath anyway, blowing the candles out in three breaths.

 

_ I want everyone to be happy. _

 

“We did, but you weren’t in the cake-eating mood….wolves don’t eat as much as dogs I guess.”

 

It doesn’t feel like that much time has passed. But I guess it was different for Phichit. And Viktor.

 

I try to eat the entire slice of cake that Phichit cuts for me, but I pay for it.  My stomach rebels, and I get sick into the toilet bowl. I brush my teeth, and when I open the door, Viktor is there with a plate of crackers and a glass of water.


	29. Viktor

**Viktor**

**64F 18C**

 

Yuuri is different. It’s not just the new layer of wolf to him and his scent.  It’s the way his bare feet pad across the floor. It’s in the chill in his hands. He’s not as warm as he used to be,  and when he crawls into bed it feels strange. Like I’ve already forgotten his presence while I slept in his bed.

 

It’s not right.

 

I kiss at his neck, but he still scrolls through my phone, reading through months of emails and a long aged instagram feed.  He makes a soft noise, spooned against me with thin pajamas between us. I smooth my hand over his stomach and under his shirt. I feel his muscles tense, my phone drop onto the mattress.

 

This time last year, I was the stranger on borrowed time and electronics.  I abandoned my summer life back with Liam with no regrets, but Yuuri doesn’t quite fit back in his own life.

 

I hunger for the taste of him. I bite at his ear lobe and his knees kick into a bend.

 

“Stop.”  He breathes, and I pull away. I sit up in the bed I have been using for the past months, ones that no longer smell of Yuuri. I want to apologize, but I don’t know what to say.

 

He doesn’t say anything more. He sits up, scrolling through  the phone listlessly.

 

“Yuuri. You should sleep.” I try not to let the irritation slip through, until I feel his fingers against my bare chest. My heart beats a mile a minute,  before his grip slides off of me.

 

He slips back against me, his head curled against my chest.

 

“Am I dead?  Yuuri whispers, and I don’t know if he wants an answer. 

 

“You’re alive. You’re here, and I’m so glad.” I whisper anyway.

 

“There’s this kid. Minami.  He’s sent an email every week.” Yuuri's fingers rest  against my chest, cold.

 

“That’s concerning.” I add, before I realize Yuuri isn’t asking for feedback. He’s talking it out.

 

“Hasetsu had a wake. He said it was people praying for my  safe return, but it didn’t sound like that. Are you ever going back to Russia? Am I  ever going to see my mom again?”

 

I didn’t mind never seeing my homeland again. But Yuuri has his family and happy memories, not chains.

 

“We have summers.” Yuuri doesn’t react, but he doesn’t pull away when I rest my hand on his back. His heart is fluttering, a mile a minute.

 

He’s panicking.

 

“I’ll be right back.”  I murmur, returning to the living room, where Phichit is finishing writing up a report for school.

 

“Hey.” Phichit looks up, one hamster camped out on his shoulder and the other on his head. 

 

“Where did you put Yuuri’s meds?”

 

“Long or short?” Phichit strokes the fatter of the hamsers


	30. Phichit

Phichit  
63F 17C

I go to my practicum only after convincing Yuuri to rest, and convincing Viktor that starting Yuuri off on a mug of egg drop soup is better than big meals.

“Phichit, let’s go to my office.” Dr. Funke appears behind me like a ghost, and I nearly drop the box of tongue depressors I was restocking from.

I feel like I’m channeling Yuuri, panic rising in my throat. “Okay!” I do my best to be cheerful, following the head doctor into her office. She motions to the chair in front of her desk, but I don’t feel like sitting.

“Am I getting fired?” I’m not getting paid for this, but whatever.

“No, Phichit. I would not fire one of the best students I’ve met. Please, sit.” Dr. Funke takes her spot behind her desk. There’s no family photos on her walls-- just her diplomas and certificates. 

I sit down, my back straight.

“I know your major is one of the more stressful ones, but I am under good report that you’ve been even more stressed than normal lately.” Dr. Funke speaks carefully. “Are you talking to anyone about it?”

“Uh, not really.” This came out of left field. “My coach is the only ones who knows the whole story… and he can’t really help. I just want to skate, you know?”

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” Dr. Funke is the highest rated professor at the college for a reason. But I suspected it was because she’s good at her job, not because she cares a lot.

I shake my head.

“Phichit... you can’t fool me. I see you putting in extra hours in the clinic that you don’t report for credit. I know those blood samples you’re storing aren’t delayed for testing. What is going on?”

Busted…

I take a deep breath. “My… friend..s.. My best friend is sick. No one can figure out what is wrong with him. He met someone who is… who has the same kind of problem…. I just want to figure it out before I lose him.”

Dr. Funke is silent, her hands resting on her desk.

“That… is incredibly difficult. Yet admirable. Why don’t you bring him in?”

“Sorry?” I stutter.

“I know you have been working hard, but the clinic has limited resources. You’d have more luck at a research hospital.”

“I’m only Pre-Med though.” I start to fidget like Yuuri does.

“I am well aware of that, Mr. Chulanont. I’m saying… I have access to more than you do.”

I have no idea how I am going to explain the wolf part to her. If I should at all. Will she be able to cure it through only seeing what Yuuri has in his blood?

“My afternoon is open tomorrow. Will you be able to get to Detroit Medical Center on your own?”

“Uh-- yeah. We can get a bus... “ I sound stunned and a little stupid. “...Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Phichit. Take care of yourself, okay? Burn-out is a big problem in medicine.”

I finally notice a photo on the wall. It’s a yellow labrador. There’s the hand of someone in the corner, cropped out by choice. I know Dr. Funke has been practicing for over a decade, and that she’s old enough to be my mother. For someone so…. Nice… she seems pretty mysterious.

“Thanks. Can I go?” I stand up, fighting the urge to bite my nails. The tongue depressors need me.

“Of course. See you tomorrow. About one o’clock?”


	31. Viktor

Viktor

I end up having to tag-team with Phichit to convince Yuuri to go to the medical center.

“She’s not going to believe us.” Yuuri bites back.  
He’s graduated from soup to mugs of oatmeal packets. The fact that he’s wearing one of my sweaters has me torn between warmth and worry. It accentuates his small frame, the sleeves brushing past his knuckles. But I don’t dare ask him to change.

“We can’t say no to this.” Phichit replies with the same amount of venom in his tone.

“It’s a good chance for a cure, Yuuri.” I snake my arm around him. We’re all in the kitchen. He fits himself against my side.

“Viktor is gonna get stuck as much as you will.” Phichit plays with the mug in his hands. “I didn’t tell her about the wolf part. We don’t need to. “

Yuuri worries his bottom lip. I lean down to kiss him, just to make him stop. I can feel him relax a little in my arms.

“Okay.” He sighs, tucking his head against my shoulder. “Let’s go.”


	32. Phichit

Phichit

The medical center is one of the biggest employers in the state, so we get on a bus within two minutes of reaching the bus stop. I know Dr.Funke practices Family Medicine, but I have to check in with the front desk to find out where to meet her. Luckily, they seem to know we are coming, and an orderly escorts us back to a conference room.

Dr. Funke has been here earlier-- there’s a row of syringes, of alcohol wipes and a box of gloves among other tools. But she isn’t in the room just yet.  
I look at the clock-- 12:55. 

When it hits 1:00, the door swings open. Dr. Funke has a paper carton of coffee from starbucks and a bag of pastries in her other hand. She’s in a white coat-- just like at the clinic-- but this one is thicker and is embroidered with Detroit Medical Center on the breast pocket.

She sets the coffee on the large center table without a word, crossing the room and leaning over slightly, staring at Viktor. Her hands go to her hips. Yuuri goes red-- he’s been sitting in Viktor’s lap for a while.

“Dr. Funke?” I manage to squeak out.

“You’re the boy Liam changed.” Dr. Funke says evenly, but there is a knife edge of anger in her tone.

“Anna.” Viktor swallows. 

Yuuri is just as shook as I am. He stares, wide-eyed at Viktor, before his eyes flicker between the two.

“Viktor Nikiforov.” Dr. Funke says evenly, before she sighs, straightening up. “You’re Phichit’s best friend?”

“No.” I say it too quickly, and I feel a little bad. “Yuuri is.”

Her green eyes flicker to Yuuri. “You made more wolves.” Her voice is calm, but Viktor winces at the judgement behind the words.

“Not on purpose.” Yuuri’s voice shakes. “I was attacked… winter before the last one. He stopped them.”

“Yuuri Katsuki.” Dr. Funke says in realization, she raises her shoulders, turning around to look at me. “No wonder you are stressed, Mr. Chulanont. You’re hiding fugitives with a story no one will believe.”

“How do you know about it?” I squeak. Things are going better than I ever expected. Maybe. It’s hard to tell right now.

Dr. Funke sighs. “Liam… the man who changed Viktor… is my ex-husband. We divorced two years ago. He saw making new wolves as saving people. I disagreed.”

There’s a spark in Viktor’s eyes. He hugs Yuuri tighter. “We want to find a cure. A permanent one.”

“Permanent?”

I laugh nervously.

She looks like she is getting a migraine when we explain my hypothesis, and how I took her mention of pyrotherapy and ran with it.

“So Yuuri proved that heat delays it, but it's not a cure…” By the time I’m done explaining it, we’re all sitting at the conference table, and Dr. Funke has written down five pages of notes.

“Exactly…” I wonder if she’s going to kick me out of the program now that she knows what I’ve been doing.

“Yuuri…” Dr. Funke starts. He stiffens in his chair. The paper cup in his hand is full of lukewarm coffee, untouched.

“Does your family know you are okay?” Dr. Funke rubs the bridge of her nose.

“No… not yet.” Yuuri swallows nervously. “I… I have been trying to think of a reason why I disappeared.”

“Any story you have won’t be any stranger than the truth.” Dr. Funke flips through her notes. “We have…. A long road ahead of us. But I think we can do it.”


	33. Yuuri/Viktor

**Yuur**

 

We set up  schedule to start working on the cure before leaving. The majority of it will be with me -/ the one who changes. Any cure that works for me will cover viktor , who is an apparent unknown. He hasn’t started having fevers or bleeding, but I’m still nervous. 

 

The talk I have to have with my parents hangs over my head. I don’t know what Celestino told them, and I’m scared to know how they react.  Phichit told me they were questioned by the police , but were let go for lack of evidence. I don’t want to cause another investigation or call attention to viktor. I think about it all day, viktors  phone weighing heavy in my palm.

 

I end up logging into Instagram and mixi and catching up on the last few months. 

 

**Viktor**

 

Yuuri spends the rest of the day quiet, scrolling through my phone curled up to my side. He grows more and more tense— I can see it in his shoulders and feel it in his arms. 

 

I try to talk about it , but he won’t. 

 

We crawl into bed together , and I push down my irritation at him to try for my last resort. I smooth his hands over his waist and press a kiss to his neck. He melts into me automatically , but he still watches the screen. 

 

I nibble at his ear

 

And he pushes me away. 

 

“Stop.” His voice is thick, and he scoots away from me. Not far, but far enough that I can feel the air between us and it stings. 

 

“Yuuri, I can tell you’re upset.” My voice is short and sharp. He sniffles before his shoulders shake. “Tell me.”

 

“I feel like I’m dead.” His whole body shudders.   

 

I don’t know what to do when someone cries. I can deal with a skinned knee or romantic movie ending. But this is so much more. 

 

I roll out of bed, partially to spare myself  but mostly to do the only thing I know to help. 

 

“Phichit, where did Yuuri's medicine go ?” I creep into the living room, where my roommate is still up working on a report. 

 

“Long or short term?” Phichit ask without looking up from the screen.  

 

“Short.”

 

“Propanolol, the orange ones in the left drawer.” Phichit types as he talks his face lit up by his computer screen. 

 

I creep back into the room with  glass of water and three pills in the palm of my hand. 

 

I am stupid

 

Yuuri is curled up into a ball, shoulders shaking with sobs. 

“Yuuri,” I sit down, spilling water into my lap. “Yuuri, talk to me!”

 

He unfurls just enough to look at me with watery doe eyes. “You left .”

 

“I… I’m sorry. Here.”  Yuuri stares at me before his eyes flash with anger. 

 

“I don’t want it.”

 

I blink.  “What ?”

 

“ I’m tired of not feeling things, Viktor ! I haven’t felt or thought anything all winter. Shouldn’t I feel it now ?” His voice comes in a growl even as tears spill down his cheeks. 

 

My Yuuri. My special , unique and special Yuuri. Who didn’t choose this. Who didn’t want to escape his mind. I thought mine was a prison , and I expected Yuuri to at least see his anxiety and self worth as a shackle. 

 

He’s always full of surprises. 

 

“Okay.” I set down the pills on the bedside table.  “I just…. Don’t suffer…” I mumble. 

Yuuri laughs softly, the sound light but not ironic. “ I can’t suffer with you here.” He wipes his cheeks before shaking his head like Makkachin would after a walk in the rain. 

 

“Then let me help. I want to help you calm down.” I tentatively reach out, and rest my hand on his knee. Yuuri fidgets, quiet and deep in thought before he blushes. 

 

“Can I be the big spoon?” He asks shyly.  My heart skips a beat. I nod enthusiastically-- Yuuri is naturally smaller, and I’m the touchy one, so I’m usually the one spooning him. My heart flutters when I settle into his chest and his arms circle my waist.  His legs tangle with mine, his cold feet on my calves.

 

He sighs, and I do too. It’s nice-- I can smell him all around me, and its secure and soft.

 

“I like… It was…” Yuuri mumbles into my neck. I can feel his breath on my skin. “Its calming… to hold something that’s breathing.”

 

“Like a puppy?” I want to say, I know. Whether he means Vicchan or another person. Before Yuuri, all I had was Makkachin.  Her love was unconditional.. But it wasn’t the same as someone who understood you in every way curled up into you, soul against soul. Or… at least it wasn’t like having a lover close to you.

 

“Yeah,” Yuuri answers softly.  He sounds more relaxed, his fingers splayed across my stomach.

 

He feels like… home.


	34. Viktor

Viktor

The first few meetings with Anna Funke consist of baseline data. She takes blood and saliva samples from Yuuri and I-- blood pressure and pulse and temperatures. She repeats the process after having us sit in in a circle of space heaters, and then again in a room with air-conditioning cranked up high. Yuuri shudders unpleasantly, but doesn’t change. I can tell Anna notices him looking sick, and notes it. If anything, she’s thorough. By the end of the first week, she has a detailed medical history for both of us, baseline data, and a theory.

“Next week we will work with adrenaline. I’ll see if I can isolate a neurotransmitter that causes the effect. It will be easier to find it once we can trigger a change harmlessly.” Anna is sharp and businesslike. Not someone I’d imagine Liam with.

“Viktor,” Anna looks up at me. I hope I can get by with pretending to be distracted by Yuuri stretching instead of daydreaming. “Can I speak to you alone?”

Yuuri looks stunned, his shoulders falling. 

“I’m not going to be any more honest than I am with Yuuri.” I say carefully, but Anna just purses her lips. 

“It’s about Liam.”

“Oh.” I gape, but Yuuri heads toward the door, trailing his fingers across my back as he passes me.   
“I’ll wait outside.” He pulls my phone out of his pocket. His is still in evidence storage, and I am forgetful, so the arrangement works. Yuuri has been back a week and no one else knows.

“Viktor, are you publically out?” Anna’s notes are tucked away. It doesn't look like a medical consult or a meeting. It’s a conversation.

“Out?” I look toward the door, mentally translating. “Do… you mean out...publicly?”

“Is it well known that you are… gay, I assume?” Anna is staring at the table. She’s playing with a button on her sleeve.

“Yes.” I blink. I was the head of St. Petersburg Pride parade a few years ago. When things were still exciting.

“You didn’t…..Do you think Liam knew?” Anna looks up at me.

“I have no idea. We didn’t talk, and he doesn’t seem to know anything about skating.” My brow furrows. “Sorry, but why do my preferences matter?”

Anna folds her hands in her lap. “Before….When we were married.. Liam was Katherine.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t… I don’t know why you’re asking me. Liam helped me through summers.. But that’s all. I didn’t know he was… Katherine?”

Anna waves her hand dismissively. “He transitioned years ago. But… I worry. I was worried when he first brought you home, and I worry when I saw you with Yuuri.”

I can’t keep the irritation swallowed back, and I know its obvious because of how she reacts.

“I’m worried that Liam has twisted it into another escape. He had a hard time… but.. Disappearing isn’t the way to fix it.”

“Yuuri isn’t a wolf because he’s gay. He was attacked by the pack.”

Anna just watches me. I don’t want to answer the question in her eyes. But she asks it anyway.

“Were you in the pack?”

I swallow, my eyes burning, my head jerking in a quick nod. 

“We all make mistakes we wish to take back.” Anna smooths her hand over the formica covered table.

“I don’t want to take it back.” My voice is hoarse.

“Just tell me. Tell me Liam isn’t telling kids that this is the best way out.” Anna’s voice wobbles. “Tell me he didn’t take anyone else’s life away.”

After Yuuri, Chris is the newest wolf I know.

“He didn’t. But I did.”


	35. Yuuri

Yuuri

Viktor’s eyes are red when he leaves the room, and Dr. Funke doesn’t follow. I let the game I was playing go on until the screen fills up and I lose. “Vitya?”

He smiles when I say it. I feel stupid, but it was worth it.

“Hungry?”

My stomach has finally stretched to a size where I can eat most of a meal without getting sick. Phichit has me drinking Pediasure until I gain another twenty pounds. 

“Mmmm.” I say, even though I still have a hard time feeling it. “I want to go on a date.”

His face lights up further, and he tangles his hand in mine. “I want to take you on one!” I can tell he is faking part of it, but his shoulders are straighter when we go down the hallway together. I don’t like it here. I can smell the astrigent stink of hospital and the dying more now than I did before. I’ve spend more time in clinics in hospitals in Detroit than I have in my whole life. I don’t need Viktor to be upset to feel like running out of it the second I can.


	36. Viktor

Viktor

It’s week three, and only Yuuri is requested at meetings now. Testing has begun, so I let Yuuri go to meet Anna first. I pick up lattes from Chad before going to the hospital, and when I arrive, Yuuri is nowhere to be seen.

“I’m not sure you want to see him.” Anna had been waiting at the door for me to arrive. Her shoulders are squared, and she looks older than usual.

“Why not?” I bristle. There’s a pile of hospital sheets on the couch in the corner.

“I gave him a sedative. “ Anna can’t meet my eyes again. “I have triggered the change… but it’s incomplete.

“Yuuri?” My voice pitches up in horror. The pile of sheets move, before part of it falls away. The world falls out with it, and I drop the coffee and cross the room in a second. I lift the sheet. Yuuri’s chin is there, just as soft. But his teeth are sharp, and his nose is black and cold. Lupine.. His eyes are wide and gorgeous, staring up at me from under a mop of fluffier and softer hair as dense as his wolf ruff.   
His nose twitches, taking in my scent, and he smiles.

“Oh,” I gulp. “You’re adorable.” His head bumps against mine, before he nuzzles me.

“He’s nonverbal. I tried. He was really agitated.” Anna gathers up the half-spilled coffee.

Yuuri’s hands are locked in the half-change, and he crawls on all fours off the couch and onto my lap. I can feel more fur-- maybe a tail. The change took his human mind and some of his human skin, stopping before bones snap and grind against each other.

He presses his weight against mine,the same way I have seem older mates do in the winter.

“Yuuri, do you hear me?” Anna is right, but I need to try anyway. He doesn’t answer to his name, and when I try to get him to look at me, they hold the same blank look as they did when we found him in the mud.

There is love, but Yuuri himself is locked behind them.

His hair flickers-- his ears have changed, but he is not entirely furry yet. Maybe its the sheer amount of skin, or God wanting to give me a break, but Yuuri is passable for human while tucked into a blanket.

“Is it permanent?” I swallow the lump in my throat.

“It should wear off… How fast is his metabolism?” Anna answers.

“I don’t know…”

“How often does he eat?” Anna finishes up mopping the rest of the coffee with a handful of paper towels. 

“Not often… he gains weight easily.. I hear.” I mumble.

I try to help Yuuri to his feet, but he tries to stand on his toes, his knees bent at an awkward angle. His legs shake. We manage a step before I give up. He’s not holding himself in the shape-- not even his hands will relax. Something stronger than himself is holding them together.

“Up to twelve hours, then.”

“We didn’t sign up for this.” I bite out.

“Oh. I know. But Yuuri knew.”

I don’t know what to say. I take the rest of the coffee and hold it up to Yuuri’s mouth. He sniffs it, and I feel a little calmer. His pink tongue darts out, and he laps it up. I can’t help but laughing, and wishing I hadn’t dropped it and lost the whipped cream topping.

“Are you done?” I ask, and Anna knows that I mean her. Yuuri curls up in my lap, lapping up the coffee, his cold black nose pressing against the lip of the paper cup.

“Basically. I know what to work on. You’re free to go.”

I have work this afternoon. I was hoping for a few hours with Yuuri, maybe a lunch date. He’s here, but the part that makes him really Yuuri is trapped away somewhere.

I carry him out in my arms, draped in hospital bed-sheets. We try getting him in a wheelchair, but he pushes out of it like a wound up jack-in-the-box toy. He whimpers when I take the coffee cup from him, but theres no way he can hold it without it spilling over both of us.  
No one pays us any attention on the bus, even when Yuuri growls at me when I slide too far away from him.

The sedative still has him drowsy when we arrive home. Phichit has class until seven, but my shift at the library starts in an hour, and I have to leave in half that time.

I leave him laying on the couch, laptop screen pointed and reflecting The King and The Skater in his eyes.


	37. Yuuri

Yuuri

Viktor doesn’t know how to cry.

He just stands there, tears falling from his eyes to the ugly carpet. His arms hang by his side.

Phichit is over-reacting. My hands don’t hurt anymore, and I wasn’t bleeding any more by the time we got to Dr. Funke’s office.

But our door is shredded, my laptop screen shattered, and I don’t remember leaving the hospital. I woke up to a view of the molding ceiling tiles laying in a pile of splinters and broken glass. My nails worn down to the beds, my body exhausted and spent from adrenaline.

I’m so tired.. Exhausted.. And I don’t know what happened.

“Yuuri… it’s always Yuuri.” Viktor whispers, watching his own tears dot the carpet.

I nearly trip again, falling into Viktors chest. I squeeze him as hard as I can, press my face into his chest. I listen to his heart beat, and after a minute, he combs his fingers through my hair.  
I manage a smile, but instead of smiling back, his face crumbles. He sobs, and I can’t smile anymore. His hands twist in my hair. I need to cut it, but I think he likes it long.

“You better come home with $500 for the deposit.” Phichit seethes.

“I’m staying.” I announce. Phichit is rarely mad. I know why he is, but he radiates a new energy that I can’t handle.

I don’t want to deal with it, even though its about me.


	38. Viktor- Aboretum

Viktor

Phichit leaves, at Yuuri’s request. Yuuri tells me that he can read until my shift is over. But I’m closing, and I can’t bear to be there anymore. Between Yuuri curled up in an armchair, trying to turn a page with a twisted arm, and Mira’s eyes on my back, I clock out.

It’s still light out when we leave.   
“We need to go to the bank.” I say. I have the money-- saved over the past few months, meant entirely to spoil Yuuri.

“Peach isn’t serious.” Yuuri watches his feet, stepping carefully from cobblestone to cobblestone on the way to Red Square.

“He was mad.”

“I don’t want to go home.” Yuuri walks aimlessly, and I follow.

 

“Then where shall we go?” I’ve only gone between work,the woods and the apartment in the months Yuuri has been a wolf.

“There.” Yuuri points in a random direction, but I know from helping at the library that its in the direction of the arboretum.

It’s empty-- summer quarter isn’t as a busy, and those who do come have retired for the night. We weave through the rose bushes and wade through the ferns and leaves in the greenhouse. It gets locked at sunset, but in these summer hours, that doesn’t mean until nine or after.

I’m used to Yuuri not talking. It’s a comfortable silence, and something I need. I focus instead on the perfumed air of the greenhouse and the scent of earth.

I’m reading a placard about some plant I quickly forget the name of when Yuuri pressed his mouth to my neck. His arms snake around my neck, and his teeth scrape against the skin. He sucks at my skin until I can feel he’s left a mark.

“Oh.” I breath. “Oh.” 

“Distract me.” Yuuri breaths into my ear, his breath hot and close enough that a shiver of pleasure jolts up me.

We’ve been together since he came back. Not the first night, but soon after. We’d been hungry for each other. But this was something entirely different.

“You surprise me, starlight.” I whisper, but I’m thankful. I’d rather be in my body than in my mind right now. Now I can just focus on Yuuri, on him and me and how this feels.

He laughs when I kiss a love bite onto his neck, squeaking when I pick him up by the hips and have him straddle me, his back pressed against the glass wall. 

“h’heavy--” He can barely talk from the kisses I interrupt him with. His cheeks are dusted a lovely pink, and his soft lips part when I try to tug at the waistband of his jeans.

“This is impossible,” He chokes out.

“Shh.. Help me.” I kiss at his ear, and he shivers and swallows back a quip. 

“I can’t.” His hands are thick with bandages and as useful as boxing gloves.

He steps lightly back on his feet, and I sink onto my knees. His knees shake when I pull his jeans and boxers down.   
“Viktor?” He asks, shakily. I look up at him, his adorable red face.

“Vitya.” I correct, before licking a wet stripe up Yuuri’s cock.

“Vitya,” He breaths like its been punched out of him. “People… are gonna see.”

“So?” I say, before taking him in my mouth. I sound pretty petulant, but Yuuri is already half-hard.

“...but.” Yuuri still manages to talk when I take him deeper. His hand bumps the back of my head. I’m unbearably hard in my own trousers, but I know I came come without Yuuri even touching me.

Damn his stamina. His breath shudders, and his hips jolt into me.   
“I--Vitya.” He breaths, fully hard and wet with my spit. 

“Tell me.” I say, resting my cheek against his thigh. He is delightfully dark from the summer sun, though his thighs have a ghost of a tan line in his olive skin.

“All-of-you.” Yuuri gasps. My hands flutter to his back, before I pull off of him. 

“I don’t have anything on me, love.” I feel awful for disappointing him, before he surprises me again.

He rips off the stalk of a nearby plant, taking my hand and squeezing it out onto my palm.  
Aloe Vera.

“Yuuri, so naughty. Destroying school property.” I purr.

“I’ve paid thousands in tuition,” He breaths. I warm the jelly in my hands before slicking up myself and Yuuri. I work my fingers into him, and he pants.

“Up. Please.” He begs, his hand sliding under my chin.

I push my trousers down the rest of the way, and Yuuri straddles me, just as flexible as a he was as a skater as he is, a part-time werewolf.

“Okay?” I ask at each small movement, and he nods until he is prepared enough to take me him. He sucks in a breath when I slowly push into him, past the initial tightness until I’m surrounded by his heat.

I’m scared to move-- scared that I’ll lose my grip on his thighs or I’ll hurt him more than me. 

“Okay.” He breaths, his eyelashes fluttering, his back pressed against the glass. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” He mutters, and we move slowly together.

“You mean we, solnyshko.” I slide back, just a bit, but the little movement wrecks him.

“Aa-ah,” He replies. We move together until he tenses up and spills onto his stomach and my shirt. There’s nothing to clean up with, and I nearly pull out, before Yuuri stops me. He pushes and pulls off me until I come, an possessive glint in his hazy eyes.

My knees are too weak to hold both of us, and I slide to the packed-earth ground underneath us. Yuuri sinks easily into the dirt, his boxers and jeans hanging off of one ankle, his cheeks as pink as the rest of him.  
“Happy?” I purr, kissing his warm, tired cheeks.

“Mmmhmm.”

I mentally sing the praises of my work wardrobe and its many layers while I strip off my thin cardigan and use it to clean both of us up. It’s not ideal, and I wont be able to wear this outfit again without thinking of him.. But it’s worth it. I work at putting Yuuri back together again, but he pushes my hands away, finding my lips with his. He’s messy and clumsy and warm enough that I worry that the fever is back.   
But this is summer, and we are here.


	39. Viktor- Loss

Viktor

“I have the money.” I pull out my wallet when we get home, Yuuri still rosy-cheeked and clingy. 

“I don’t want your money!” Phichit is still steaming, sitting on the couch. The hardwood floors are scratched and the room looks emptier-- a few items gone. “I want to know why this happened.”

I drop my hands, not sure what to say. Yuuri deflates-- he’s small again, like he had looked when he showed up at the library.

“I want to know whats more important to you-- Yuuri-- Or your job?”  
The air goes instantly cold. Yuuri opened his mouth, pushing forward, but I touch his shoulder.

“I didn’t want to bother you.” I still can manage the even, disconnected tone from my past life.

“Tell me. Yuuri, or job?” Phichits words are sharp and jagged

“Yuuri, of course, but I needed to go in--”

“For what?” Phichit scoffs.  
“To--- I--- I have to be there, so Yuuri has somewhere to come home to in the spring!” I stutter, ,squeezing the leather fold of the wallet in my hand.

“You’re not the only person Yuuri has, Viktor!” Phichit throws up his hand. “Yuuri has a family, and friends, and a home already! Without you---”

“You’re right.” I cut Phichit off, but I don’t care. I walk to the bathroom and drop my sweater into the laundry hamper. I can hear Yuuri and Phichit fighting in the living room-- Yuuri is too loud and already teary-eyed, but I don’t want to listen. I know Yuuri is defending me-- but Phichit is right. I’m monopolizing the only good thing in my life, and it isn’t fair. I’ve taken Yuuri and his life away from him.

I have a fresh shirt in my hand when I hear Phichit call for me-- but its not anger. It’s panic.

I walk into the living room,preparing to build a wall, before it shatters. 

“Whats wrong with him? What did Dr. Funke do? Viktor?” Phichits voice is thin. Yuuri’s shoulders shake, his bones humming with the threat of change. His skin and pale, and I can smell the almond sweetness from a step away. 

I reach out to take his hand and he draws back with a snarl. His back hits the door, and he sinks to the floor, his eyes losing their human veil. He whimpers, but he doesn’t change.

His mind-- the one thing I could never escape, in my human life or wolf skin-- is the first thing Yuuri loses in his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and this is the last chapter I had already written!


	40. Phichit

Phichit

I’m scared. Not of Yuuri, but for him. Scared that eventually, I’ll lose my best friend completely. Forever.

I’m used to his panic attacks-- I know what to do. But this is different. There’s no Yuuri to comfort and help.

I end up pushing Viktor back into the bedroom, blocking the door myself. I thought he would fight more, but he’s shell shocked. He just sinks onto Yuuri’s bed and holds his head in his hands.

I wait until I can hear Yuuri walk into the bathroom and splash water on his face before I open the door. His eyes are red and puffy.

This is my fault.

I should have been a better friend.

If he hadn’t been walking alone, sick---

Our eyes meet the same time there is a sharp rapping at the front door.

“Detroit Police. Open up.”


	41. Phichit

Phichit

I fold my hands behind me after opening the door. I don’t want them to see me shaking. There’s two officers in the doorway, both in dark uniforms. My eyes find their guns right away.

One of them is familiar--- the same one we talked to the day Yuuri slipped out of the hospital.

“Good evening. We have reports that Yuuri Katsuki and Viktor Nikiforov are with you.” The more familiar officer-- House, judging by his embroidered patch-- tries to sound friendly.

But he’s not my friend, and whatever they’re doing, it’s not going to help Yuuri.

I panic, cursing in my mother tongue, which at least buys us a second and makes the officers look concerned.

“We have a warrant.” Officer House sounds too nice. “We just need to check on the welfare of the missing persons.”

My eyes dart back to the bedroom, my heart stopping when Yuuri shoulders past me.

“I’m okay. Please leave,” Yuuri sniffed wetly. His hands are shaking by his side. I don’t know if that’s new or from our fight.

Officer House looks visibly relieved, like he’s solved a case that he, in reality, is making worse.

“We just need to talk to you alone.” The second officer hasn’t said a word.

Yuuri shoved his feet back into his shoes wordlessly. The look in his eyes when he glances back at me nearly breaks my heart.

He touches my hand-- I know instantly I’m forgiven, even if I don’t deserve it. Yuuri steps outside the door.

They’re party down the hallway when the second officer comes in. My ears roar with the buzz of panic as I uselessly watch Viktor being led out the door in handcuffs.


	42. Yuuri

Yuuri

Officer William House brings me to an office building a few blocks away from campus. It’s not anything like the police boxes back home.

I’m terrified they’ll send me home. Put me on an airplane without a single goodbye.

But he just brings me to an office room, tells me to sit down before coming back with a paper cup of coffee. He sets it in front of me. The whir of the air conditioning is too loud and the room feels too big and too small all at once.

“What is your relationship with Viktor Nikiforov?” William asks, his tone soft. He’s really trying to be friendly, but it doesn’t work.

I can feel my face bretay me, my cheeks burning hot. “We’re engaged.” I mumble, picking at the rolled edge of the coffee cup.

“Does he treat you well?”

My eyes snap up to William’s. “Yes,” I don’t want the coffee-- it smells burnt, and its an offering I don’t want to accept. But my throat is dry and tight from yelling and panicking at Phichit.

“I’m here to make you’re safe, Yuuri.” William sighs. I bristle a little. I’ve never met him before, and he’s talking to me like we are friends.

“I am.” I bite out. “Can I go home now?”

“We’re glad you’re well, Yuuri… but we need to know why.” Officer House looks too young to be an officer. Like he should still be in highschool or college. “How you met Viktor… why you went missing like he did. So that this doesn’t happen again.”

The problem is way beyond Viktor and me, even if they believe the truth.

The officer just stares at me, waiting in the quiet.

“He saved my life.” I say each word carefully. “He’s been staying with us.”

“Yuuri.. We’re here to help. If it’s a gang… or a crime ring… We can help you get out.”

I curl into myself. The police back home are friends. The police in america, not so much. William has a gun at his hip, and I don’t want to be here.

“I don’t need help. I’m fine.” I shiver, scratching at my palms with my nails. I try to resist the urge to bite them.

“We can only help you if you allow us. I can promise… if Viktor has threatened anything, he can’t hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” My voice is too loud, and William blinks. My cheeks feel hot. “He may be forgetful sometimes and yeah, he uses way too many skin products, but he’d never hurt me!” 

William looks lost, and in the awkwardness of it all, he smiles. “Sure, Yuuri. But you’re both international athletes who went missing in this area… and then you’re seen together. It’s suspicious.”

“No one else is in danger. They’d have to be really stupid to get to the point I am.”

“What did you do?”

The words come out without thought behind them. 

“I don’t know. Get eaten by wolves!” 

My stomach twists.  
My hands are shaking too hard to hold anything.

“Are you cold? The AC in here is really strong, but I can see if we can turn it lower at the main box--”

I don’t get to answer. I stare back at the officer as I feel my bones shift and crack.

I won’t have to explain after all.


	43. Viktor- an ally

Viktor

They question me like a criminal. But I have no answers.

What did you do the winter you disappeared?

Eat rabbits in the woods, mostly.

Are you involved in any gangs or crime rings?

I’m sure some of my family is involved in the Bratva. It’s hard to do business without being involved. But I never had time to do anything but skating when I was in Russia.

Here, I’ve been in the woods… or with Yuuri.

They keep me in handcuffs even though I’m in an office room just like the one Yuuri was lead into. It’s completely soundproof, though. I don’t notice anything amiss until the door slams open, and the other office-- House? Is in the doorway, looking like he saw a ghost.

“Nikiforov. I need him. Cuffs off.” He pants. I feel instantly better at the idea of not looking like a criminal, but something must be wrong.

“Why---?” The other officer hushes me, and I am quiet as House nods down the hall.

“Are you like him?” Officer House heaves.

“Sorry?” It’s been an awful, long night, and it’s too late by the time I realize what he’s really asking.

“Do you change. Like him.”

“Oh, fuck.” I breath, running my hands through his hair. “I--I… Yeah. Used to.”

“Can you control it? Or do something? Before he destroys my office, and it becomes a department wide news item?” House hisses at me.

“N-no. It’s temperature controlled. H-heat helps. He knows me. I can calm him down.” My heart is hammering, and adrenaline is rushing through me, but no change comes. House gestures to the door, and I remember myself.  
My hands are shaking, and I open the door slowly. I creep in, using my body to hide whatever is happening past the doorway.

He’s hiding under a table, his ever-human eyes staring at me, black ears pressed back against his skull.

His sneakers still sit the perfect distance from a chair, his pants and shirt twisted on the carpet. It looks like he was spirited away. More likely… his emotions have stolen him away.

“Yuuri… “ I coo, sinking to the floor and making myself as small as possible. It takes several excruciating minutes before he creeps out from under the table. He slides onto my lap, pressing his head hard against my chest.

The door opens, and I panic-- Yuuri does too-- until I realize it is Officer House with two space heaters.

Yuuri shrinks away from the officer, but otherwise, does not make a sound. He stands awkwardly behind his desk.

“So… he wasn’t trying to be impertinent.” House sighs.

“I don’t know english well enough to understand.. But no. There’s no way to explain this.”

“Werewolves. Huh.” He plugs in the space heater and aims them toward Yuuri. 

I reach out and grab Yuuri’s glasses from the carpet and fold the arms down before they get stepped on.

“I’ll dismiss the case if you tell me how he got involved in this.” The officer continued.

“A stranger offered me a way out. I was depressed. I didn’t believe him until it was too late. Yuuri….it was an accident. It was a hard winter… and after a point, you stop being human.”

The officer didn’t look away. “He was in a hospital.”

“Phichit.Our room-mate. He’s in med school...well. He thinks its a virus. A virus that can’t stand heat. Yuuri didn’t change right away because of the fever he had when he was… bitten. But it came back. We had to change him before he died.” Tears sting my eyes as I recall the past winter without Yuuri.

“But you said you used to change.”

I almost laugh. There’s nothing to get past him.

“We...tried other things. Before we knew why Yuuri didn’t change. I’m just on borrowed time.”

I pull my fingers through Yuuri’s fur as he begins to shake and shudder in my arms. The AC clicked off without my notice, and ten minutes later, with respectfully averted gaze, Yuuri is back to himself in my arms.

I help him into his shirt and pants. His hands shake, and I know his mouth is sour and stomach empty. I kiss his forehead and slide his glasses back onto his nose before he says a word.

“I want to go home,” He finally says, his tone pitiful. I look at Officer House. I have no reason to trust him… but somehow, I do.

“Can we?” I ask, the memory of handcuffs still fresh on my skin.

He opens the door for us.


	44. Viktor

Viktor

After the accidental shift, and without the threat of law enforcement looming over our heads, Yuuri ventures out to the world with me. He reads books while I work-- mainly at my request. I know someone at work reported us. I use Yuuri selfishly as motivation to go to a job I no longer feel safe at. I took Yuuri from his life-- and any chance of sponsorships. So I have to keep doing this.

Even if it makes it even harder to see Yuuri lounging in an armchair, thumbing through a paperback. We haven’t been brave enough to re-enroll him in college only to have him disappear in the winter.

The winter is my enemy again as the months pass and Yuuri spends hours at the research hospital with no sign of progress. The air grows chilly and I wrap Yuuri in more and more layers of clothing. I used to love the crisp autumn air-- it meant more competition, hot tea and the burn of worked muscles. Now it just tasted like the threat of losing the love of my life.

We come dangerously close at the end of September.


	45. Yuuri

Yuuri

It’s still early fall when an unexpected cold snap takes Michigan by storm. I’m used to damp cold, but the air outside of the bed, outside of the shared heat of Viktor’s body curled against mine is too cold.

I think for a second that I wake up Viktor with the groan that escapes my lips-- but he’s already awake, his phone is his hand and his arms around me. It would be creepy to some people, but with Viktor it just feels nice.

“Cold,” I breathe. I can hear Phichit stomp around the living room. Great, I’ve slept later than everyone else.

“The coffee maker isn’t working, and the thought the furnace was out, but like… Nothing.” Phichit muttered after stomping back into our bedroom.

“The power is out?” Viktors voice vibrates deep in his chest and I can feel it in my bones.

“Oh. Shit, you’re right.” Phichit gasps. “Oh, shit. That means…” I can feel everyones eyes roll onto me. 

“It’s cold enough to change.” Viktor answers for him, the easy rest I had woken up to twisting into anxiety.

“What do we do?” Phichits voice rose uncomfortably. I hug Viktor tighter-- I feel secure in my human skin. For now.

“Find Yuuri some heat.” Viktor doesn’t move from bed as Yuuri piles all the flannel and wool in the house on the bed. Viktor tucks them under his feet to warm the cloth before awkwardly pulling them onto me under the covers.

“Is the stove gas or electric?” Viktor asks when Phichit buzzes back into the room.

“Uh, gas? This place is old--why?”

“You have matches?” Viktor keeps the fronts of the shirts open and his chest pressed against mine. It would be kind of sexy if I wasn’t terrified of changing into a wolf.

“Maybe in the kitchen drawer of mess?” Phichit hummed.

Ten minutes later, Viktor and I shuffle, wrapped in blankets, into the kitchen. The stovetop and oven are both on and open, and our least flammable chair is set in front of it.

“Is this safe?” I ask as we move to sit by the open oven door. The heat is stifling and smells a little like burned remained of the chicken Phichit made months ago.

“It’s what we got. Maybe we can call Celestino.”

I want to praise Phichit and Viktor for their quick thinking and genius… but I start shaking. The one-sided heat is not enough. My whole body wracks with the edge of nausea that comes before a change.

“Yuuri?” Viktor crouches close. His hands brush my cheek, and I just have to look at him before he knows.


	46. Viktor

Viktor

“Don’t leave me,” I beg, cupping Yuuri’s face in my hands. He’s scared. I know he doesn’t have a choice. But I have to say it.

“I… am trying…” Yuuri’s teeth chatter. He’s pale. I feel almost as sick as he does.

“I don’t want another winter without you, love,” I breath, pressing my forehead to his. His shoulders shake under the blankets, even with Phichit pressed against his other side.

“Y--yyou can do it. Anna won’t take l-long.” Yuuri forced a half-smile.

“In another year?” I frown. I had expected a cure by now. Yuuri was unfuriatingly more patient than I ever will be.

“When it happens…” Yuuri lifts his shoulders, pulling his blankets over them and balling them in his fists. “You can’t rush science.”

“Yuuri… please… Let me change with you.” I hold my wrist up to his mouth, baring the white skin and purple veins to his teeth.

His face crumples in fear. “What? No.” He breathed, the shaking growing more violent. “No way.”

“Please, love.” I keep my position firm and unwavering. It’s been my plan since we picked Yuuri up from the mud in the spring. I just wanted to soak in my ignorance for a little big longer.

“No.” Yuuri says with force, and anger bubbles up in my stomach.

“Why not? Why can’t I be with you?” My voice rises the same moment Yuuri slips from the chair and into a half human half-monster skin.

“Yuuri!” Phichit cries out.

My Yuuri is gone.

My Yuuri is gone, and I am left alone in a life I don’t want to live.

I fall on top of the twisting, changing form on the floor and press down. I pin down the thrashing monster until it finally settles into its chosen form. 

It takes a moment for the adrenaline to wear out before I realize, with sick joy that the part of my arm I had used to pin down Yuuri’s neck is slick and red, torn open by teeth and panic.

Inexplicably, I feel relief


	47. Viktor

Viktor. 

The cold snap disappeared as quickly as it came. I find myself back in my skin in the football field of the local high school, and the board still holds the same message as it did when I last saw it. My arm isn’t even healed all the way-- the skin red and angry and dirty from underbrush.  
Thankfully, the sun sets early, and I creep back to the apartment under the cover of darkness.

My punishment comes quickly.

 

“Viktor-- I---” Phichit looks apologetic already. “Welcome back.” He mutters before retreating back to his bedroom.

“Yuuri!” I breath, leaning down, even in my nakedness, to wrap myself around my mate.

“Don’t touch me.” He growls at me, his hands pressing into my chest. I don’t even get to be within a meter of him.

I don’t need to form a question for Yuuri to answer.

“I said no.” His eyes fill with fresh tears and spill over raw cheeks that show hours of spilled tears.

“You didn’t even ask me why--” I grasp for a reason why Yuuri would be so steadfast to deny me so solidly. 

“I don’t have to! I said no-- I don’t want--”

“What? Don’t want what? For me to be with you? For anyone else to be a wolf?” I bite out. Yuuri is at a loss for words, but the anger still flashes in his eyes.

“I don’t want you to mess it up!” Yuuri’s voice matches the volume of mine. The anger.

“You’re not the only one who can fix this, Yuuri. If you stopped thinking of only yourself--”

I regret the words the instant I see Yuuri react to them. I reach out, but he pushes me away. He beats my hands away when I try again, before a soft, keening, broken cry escaped from his lips and rose into the air.

I broke him. I ruined it.

“Go,” He chokes out between a hiccup. “Leave!” His voice rises again. “Get out.” His cheeks shine with tears, his eyes puffy and red and glistening with too many tears. 

“How long?” I ask weakly. We’ve never fought before-- I have no idea how long it takes Yuuri to burn through his anger.

Yuuri’s whole body heaves with a sob, his glasses crooked as his fingers push against his eyes. 

“Spring!” He drops his hands, balling them into fists at his knees.


End file.
